Politics Daily

House Rejects Proposal to Pull Troops from Afghanistan

Politics Daily Staff — 2011-03-17T18:54:00+00:00

The House on Thursday rejected a proposal calling for the removal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year, news agencies reported.

The resolution, sponsored by Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich, was turned down 93 to 321. But The Hill and The Plain Dealer in Cleveland noted it had more support this time than in 2010 when the House rejected a similar Kucinich measure 65 to 356.

Kucinich said Congress should assert its authority over the war, though others argued that lawmakers should trust military leaders and President Obama.

Support for continued U.S. involvement in Afghanistan has taken a sharply negative turn. Politics Daily reported this week on an ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted March 10-13 that found 64 percent of Americans do not believe the war is worth fighting.

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Poll Shows Faith in Government Plummets; Warning Signs for Republicans Emerge

Bruce Drake — 2011-03-15T11:11:00+00:00

Filed under: Democrats, Republicans, Polls, Obama Administration, Afghanistan, Poll Watch, Independents, Congress, Economy

While voters may have vented their anger at Washington in last year's elections and altered the balance of power, the public at large is no happier now with the way government is working, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted March 10-13.

Almost half of those surveyed -- 49 percent -- express uncertainty about "our system of government and how well it works" and what it portends for the future. Twenty-six percent said they were optimistic about how well the system of government would serve the nation and 23 percent were pessimistic, with 7 percent undecided.

The 26 percent who expressed optimism represented the lowest number in 35 years.

That compares to February 1999 when 54 percent described themselves as optimistic and 19 percent as pessimistic, with 27 percent uncertain and 1 percent undecided.

The Post/ABC finding comes on the heels of a Gallup poll conducted March 3-6 that showed the percentage of Americans who approved of the way Congress is doing its job dropping to 18 percent, after being in the low 20s in January and February.

Much of the sour outlook appears to stem from public perceptions of the economy, but there are also strong signs of disgruntlement with Republicans, who captured the House last November and strengthened their position in the Senate.

Fifty-three percent do not believe that the economy has begun to recover compared to 46 percent who think it has, with 1 percent undecided. While a majority still holds that view, it is an improvement over December when 57 percent said they saw no improvement.

Forty-nine percent said the economic stimulus program pushed through the last Congress by President Obama and the Democrats had no effect on the economy. Twenty-eight percent said it helped and 21 percent said it had hurt.

Fifty-five percent disapproved of Obama's handling of the economy compared to 43 percent who approved, with 2 percent undecided. That represented an uptick in the percentage of those who disapproved of the job Obama was doing on the economy, and his worst showing since last September.

But that was not necessarily good news for Republicans. Forty-six percent trusted Obama more than the Republicans to do a better job handling the economy compared to 34 percent who believed the Republicans would do a better job, with the remainder answering "both" or "neither."

Those surveyed said Obama represented their values more than the Republicans by a 46 percent to 41 percent margin, with 1 percent undecided. Forty-seven percent said Obama better understood the economic problems people were having than the Republicans, compared to 35 percent who said the Republicans understood better, with the remainder answering both or neither.

ABC polling analyst Gary Langer said, "The drop in trust to handle the economy has occurred chiefly among independents, now drawing away from the GOP after rallying to its side. As recently as January, 42 percent of independents preferred the Republicans in Congress over Obama to handle the economy. Today just 29 percent say the same, and there's been a rise in the number who volunteer that they don't trust either side."

Another possible factor in the overall gloom about government is the continuing war in Afghanistan. Sixty-four percent of Americans do not believe the war is worth fighting, a number that has been rising steadily since last April, when it stood at 52 percent.

Seventy-three percent said the U.S. should withdraw a substantial number of combat troops by this summer. Eighty-seven percent of Democrats held that view, as did 78 percent of independents. Fifty-six percent of Republicans, who have been more supportive than Democrats of the war effort, said the U.S. should withdraw troops.

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Obama: Here's Your Change, Sir

Robert and Donna Trussell — 2011-03-10T12:25:00+00:00

Filed under: Humor, Taxes, Foreign Policy, Obama Administration, Chaos Theory, Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Iraq

Follow the Trussell cartoons
on Twitter at ChaosTheoryPD

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82nd Airborne Quick-Strike Force Gives Obama New Option in Mideast Crises

David Wood — 2011-03-08T22:24:00+00:00

Filed under: Iran, Foreign Policy, National Security, Afghanistan, Military, Middle East, Iraq

FORT BRAGG, N.C. -- As revolution zigzags chaotically across the Middle East and North Africa, the U.S. Army is sharpening its readiness to launch rapid-reaction, kick-in-the-door combat forces, adding capabilities and skills that had atrophied during a decade of counterinsurgency missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

For the first time in years, the 82^nd Airborne Division here has stood up its "ready brigade," trained to a razor's edge and poised to move instantly, as one of its paratroopers said, "to the sound of the guns."

This new capability gives President Obama the option to swiftly land powerful military forces anywhere in the world for missions that could include evacuating American citizens, safeguarding fragile new democracies from counterattack, or violently taking down a renegade regime.

At the same time, the Army is considering reinforcing this Global Response Force with heavier combat units that could swiftly reinforce the 82^nd Airborne's lightly armed paratroopers.

With these steps, said the division commander, Maj. Gen. Jim L. Huggins, the United States is regaining the "strategic depth" it lacked during much of the past decade when the Army was struggling to man the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and simply lacked the troops to set aside for crisis response. "The resources are flowing, and we are building that capability back," he said.

And it's coming just in time. Few may hope more devoutly for peaceful, democratic change in the Middle East than the division's 20,000 hardened war-fighters, many of whom are facing their fifth or sixth combat deployment.

But hope is not a strategy.

Instead, Huggins' soldiers are honing their skills at "forcible entry" -- the ability to parachute into enemy territory with their armored gun trucks and 155mm howitzers, seize and defend an airfield to enable reinforcements to land, and fight their way to the objective. Safely landing 2,000 paratroopers and equipment at night on a three-mile-long, blacked-out drop zone and then swiftly organizing and moving out, Huggins observed dryly, "takes some practice."

But as political upheaval boils, from nuclear-armed Pakistan to the oilfields of the Persian Gulf fiefdoms and North Africa, sending in paratroopers may not be enough if heavy armed conflict begins to threaten vital U.S. national interests.

With the encouragement of Gen. Martin Dempsey, selected to become the Army's new chief this spring, the Army is considering adding "medium and heavy combat brigades" to the Global Response Force, said Col. Dan Baggio, a spokesman for the Army's Forces Command. The units being evaluated, which could include elements of a Stryker brigade and even heavy armored brigades, are stationed in the United States and would have to be airlifted into combat.

The idea is to provide a heavy force quickly for major combat, Dempsey wrote in a new addition to the Army's operations field manual, to "gain the initiative . . . and set conditions for stability operations" to follow.

All these steps seem in sync with an emerging vision for a leaner, smaller, faster Army after Iraq and Afghanistan. In a widely noted speech last month at West Point, Defense Secretary Robert Gates memorably trashed the idea of sending a massive land force into war in the Middle East or Africa, saying big wars should be the responsibility primarily of naval forces and aviation. But he strongly endorsed the "strategic rationale for swift-moving expeditionary forces" as "self-evident" for counterterrorism, rapid reaction, disaster response, stability or security force assistance missions.

The Obama administration also has proposed cutting the size of the Army by 27,000 soldiers beginning in 2015, assuming that by then the Afghan war will be winding down, Gates said last week.

Expanding from the narrow mission of counterinsurgency to quick-reaction missions -- which might demand a full spectrum of skills, from providing disaster relief to fighting the opening battles of World War III -- marks an abrupt change for the 82^nd Airborne Division. For a decade it has fought in small units, squads of nine to 12 soldiers and platoons of 30 or 40, working with local soldiers and villagers in a kind of armed nation-building. These operations required little or no coordination with neighboring units.

But now, with its ready brigade unhooked from this counterinsurgency mission, it can refocus on the skills required for larger company- and battalion-size maneuvers involving hundreds of soldiers in tight coordination with artillery, mortars, helicopter gunships and Air Force strike fighters. And the paratroopers, relieved of counterinsurgency duty, can catch up on the jumping skills they hadn't been able to practice in Iraq or Afghanistan. Before 2001, it was common to see a staff sergeant here with 60 or 70 jumps to his credit; today, a senior enlisted paratrooper may have fewer than 20, said 1^st Sgt. Christian Requejo of the 2^nd Battalion, 505^th Parachute Infantry Regiment.

They are getting the practice. In one exercise last month, the division and the Air Force coordinated an airdrop of 1,600 paratroopers, together with eight armored Humvee gun trucks, two howitzers, a dump truck and a grader (for building airfield defensive fortifications) from an air armada of 27 C-17 and C-130 airlifters.

Doing all that quickly and safely requires an immense amount of preparation. "We were not used to maneuvering as a company or a battalion," said one company commander, Capt. Mike Thompson. "It takes meticulous planning -- or it can be a goat-screw."

Early on a recent, chilly morning, a clutch of captains and lieutenants of the division's ready brigade gathered to rehearse a complex mission: coordinating air strikes from F-16s and attack helicopters with artillery and mortar fire as paratroopers maneuvered through bands of enemy to seize a small village.

A scale model of the terrain was laid out on the grass behind their barracks, with tape marking out routes and plastic blocks representing houses. In what is called an ROC (rehearsal of concept) drill, the lieutenants who lead platoons walked through their actions as they engaged the enemy and made quick decisions on whether calling in artillery strikes would endanger nearby troops or conflict with the Apache helicopter gunships and UAVs orbiting over the battlefield.

Their battalion commander, Lt. Col. Marcus Evans, is a demanding teacher and coach. "If you haven't run through this four or five times with a chalk board before you come out here, you're missing something," he told his young officers. "Drill it, drill it, drill it!" And plan for the unexpected, he added. "We can't war-game all the contingencies -- but we can do the top 10 and rehearse them!"

Brigades training in these skills will get severely tested at the Army's National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif., which has built extensive facilities for counterinsurgency training, including mock Afghan villages and Pashtun-speaking role players. But starting this August, the NTC will switch from training only for counterinsurgency, and instead will hold six month-long war games over the course of a year, pitting visiting brigades against the battle-hardened 11^th Armored Cavalry Regiment in simulated, but grueling, full-spectrum combat.

None of the skills and capabilities the Army is regaining may be applicable as upheaval sweeps across the Middle East and North Africa. As Gates and others have noticed, the Pentagon has a perfect record in predicting where and when future conflict will erupt: It has gotten it wrong every time. But that is one reason for the "full-spectrum" preparation of the 82^nd Airborne Division's ready brigade.

"We've been deficient as a great power in being overly committed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan without having any additional capacity to do anything else that could come along," said John Nagl, a former West Point armor officer and Rhodes scholar who is president of the Center for a New American Security, a nonpartisan research institution in Washington, D.C. "The Army was really tapped out."

"Particularly with what's going on in the world, it's not hard to imagine the president needing a brigade of the 82^nd at short notice," Nagl said. "But having that capability doesn't mean we're going to use it."

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Libya and Iraq: Two Ways of Opposing a Tyrant -- but One Stole the Nation's Pride

Mark I. Pinsky — 2011-03-05T22:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush, Terror, Foreign Policy, Obama Administration, Afghanistan, France, Military, Middle East, Iraq, Egypt Crisis

The historic anti-authoritarian, pro-democratic uprisings that have swept across North Africa raise an intriguing and troubling question: Absent American intervention, could a similar movement have unseated Iraq's Saddam Hussein?

Communism came to Eastern Europe in the kit bag of the Red Army, according to the old glib-but-accurate gibe. This is essentially how the U.S. military installed democracy in Iraq.

WikiLeaks Suspect Bradley Manning Hit With 22 New Charges

Tom Diemer — 2011-03-03T09:56:00+00:00

Filed under: Scandal, Investigations, Terror, National Security, Afghanistan, Military, WikiLeaks, Iraq

Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, the suspected source of many of the hundreds of thousands of classified documents turned over to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, has been hit with 22 additional charges, including "aiding the enemy," which carries the death penalty on conviction.

Military prosecutors, however, have told Manning's lawyers they will not recommend capital punishment in the case that, if tried, would go before a court-martial. Manning, 23, is being held at a military brig in Quantico, Va., on earlier accusations related to leaks when he was an intelligence specialist in Iraq.

Charges brought Wednesday under the Uniform Code of Military Justice include aiding the enemy -- the "enemy" is not specified -- wrongly causing intelligence to be posted on the Internet, and violating Army regulations on information security, the Washington Post reported. The government asserts that WikiLeaks' posting of Iraq and Afghanistan war documents and also State Department cables put soldiers and civilians at risk.

"The new charges more accurately reflect the broad scope of the crimes that Pfc. Manning is accused of committing," Army spokesman Capt. John Haberland said. If convicted on all charges, Manning could face life in prison.

In a separate matter Tuesday in London, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange appealed an extradition order that would force him to return to Sweden to answer sex offense complaints. The appeal could drag on for two or three months, an Assange attorney told CNN.

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Marc Grossman Reported to Be Next Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan

Carla Baranauckas — 2011-02-14T21:55:00+00:00

Filed under: International, Afghanistan

A replacement for Richard Holbrooke as special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan has been chosen by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Karen DeYoung of The Washington Post reported Monday night.

The new special envoy will be Marc Grossman, a retired diplomat, and his appointment is expected to be announced by Clinton on Friday when she delivers a major Afghan-Pakistan speech at the Asia Society in New York, the Post said, citing unidentified administration officials.

Clinton and Grossman had a meeting Monday morning, the Post said, adding that when Grossman was asked about the post he said he was "not in a position to comment."

A native of Los Angeles, Grossman retired from the State Department in 2005. He had been under secretary of state for political affairs, assistant secretary of state for European affairs and U.S. ambassador to Turkey, from 1994 to 1997. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his master's degree in international relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Grossman is a vice chairman at the Cohen Group, a Washington-based consulting group founded by former Defense Secretary William Cohen.

The special envoy position became open when Holbrooke died in December while undergoing surgery to repair a torn aorta.

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The Afghanistan War: Tactical Victories, Strategic Stalemate?

David Wood — 2011-02-13T22:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Terror, Afghanistan Journal, Afghanistan, Military

The top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus, likes to describe the tactical gains his troops are making against insurgents. But a stream of independent data and analysis suggests a wide gap between those battlefield gains and the strategic progress needed to convince a skeptical President Obama, Congress and the public to stay with the war effort for at least three more years.

Recently, for instance, Petraeus asserted that his forces "achieved what we set out to achieve in 2010, which was to reverse the insurgency momentum.'' He has said that Taliban insurgents "are losing momentum in some key areas'' and noted that many are turning themselves into Afghan authorities.

Rumsfeld Says He Should Have Quit Defense Post After Abu Ghraib Scandal

Politics Daily Staff — 2011-02-03T10:29:00+00:00

Filed under: Bush Administration, Terror, Foreign Policy, International, Afghanistan, France, European Union, Iraq, Islam

Donald Rumsfeld, known for his tart one-liners as well as his hawkish foreign policy stands, says in a new memoir that he regrets that he did not step down as defense secretary after reports of abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

In "Known and Unknown," Rumsfeld says he wishes he had insisted that President George W. Bush accept his offer to resign after news broke in 2004 of the rough and humiliating treatment of detainees by American jailers. In an account of the book by the New York Times, Rumsfeld blamed the abuses on rogue soldiers -- not any approved policies. But he says that "more than anything else I have failed to do . . . I regret that I did not leave at that point."

The subsequent "drum-beat of 'torture' " by critics became a "damaging distraction," he writes in the book, which is published by Sentinel and due out next week.

As for those snappy wisecracks, the 78-year-old Rumsfeld now says he shouldn't have said "stuff happens" when looting was reported after the fall of Baghdad, and admits that using the term "Old Europe" to diminish France and Germany for not supporting the Iraq War was not all that diplomatic, the Washington Post notes in its report on the book.

But Rumsfeld, for the most part, defends his actions and says the invasion of Iraq was worthwhile because the Middle East "would be far more perilous than it is today" had Saddam Hussein stayed in power. And he says President Bush broached the idea of a war strategy for Iraq just 15 days after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. With the Pentagon preparing to fight al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, the president "asked that I take a look at the shape of our military plans on Iraq," Rumsfeld says.

Rumsfeld also calls Bush a "far more formidable president" than he is given credit for, but says his management style often failed to produce clear objectives during National Security Council meetings. He puts part of the blame for that on then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and also criticizes then-Secretary of State Colin Powell for running an operation at Foggy Bottom that was reluctant to follow Bush's political direction.

For his part, Rumsfeld says he never refused requests from military commanders for more troops for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But he concedes more boots on the ground may have averted the looting and chaos in Baghdad after the government was toppled.

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Poll: Democrats and Republicans Strongly Favor Alternative Energy Incentives, Tax Overhaul

Bruce Drake — 2011-02-02T14:12:00+00:00

Filed under: Democrats, Republicans, Health Care, Guns, Taxes, Immigration, Polls, Trade, Energy, Afghanistan, Poll Watch, Independents, Congress

One of the big questions for Congress in 2011, now that Republicans control the House while Democrats still hold the reins in the Senate, is what issues both parties might be able to jointly address.

While public opinion is not always the determining factor, given the politics of Capitol Hill, two actions on which there is a good amount of bipartisan agreement would be to pass a bill providing incentives to develop alt ernative energy and an overhaul of the tax code, according to a USA Today/Gallup poll conducted Jan. 14-16.

Gallup asked those surveyed about eight possible actions Congress could take this year (although, for some reason, the list did not include health care reform or efforts to repeal it).

The five actions that got majority support were doing something to encourage alternative energy solutions (83 percent), revamping the tax code (76 percent), speeding up the withdrawal from Afghanistan (72 percent), passing an energy bill expanding drilling and exploration for oil and gas (65 percent) and approving a free-trade agreement with South Korea (53 percent).

Passing stronger gun control laws, as some lawmakers proposed after the Arizona shooting tragedy, fell just short of a majority at 49 percent. Two possible actions regarding immigration -- taking steps to deny automatic citizenship to children born to illegal immigrant parents in the U.S. or providing a path to legal status for those here illegally -- ranked last, at 44 percent and 43 percent, respectively.

When it comes to how the results play out along partisan lines, the action where the results were the most similar was for overhauling the federal tax code, with support for that in the mid-to-high 70s for Democrats, Republicans and independents alike.

There is not as much agreement on passing an alternative energy bill, but it still gets decisive majorities across the political board. Ninety-three percent of Democrats favor action on this issue, compared to 82 percent of independents and 75 percent of Republicans.

The complication, of course, is that major energy legislation tends to be tied to other more contentious proposals, as "cap and trade" was last year. If a proposal for encouraging alternative energy was part of such a bigger bill, the other issues could sink it.

Some of the biggest Democratic-Republican divisions were on gun control laws and proposals to provide a path to legal status for unauthorized immigrants. Sixty-eight percent of Democrats favored strong gun control laws compared to 30 percent of Republicans, and 64 percent of Democrats supported giving illegals a path to legal status, compared to only 27 percent of Republicans.

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Army Was Advised Not to Send Suspected Leaker Bradley Manning to Iraq

Politics Daily Staff — 2011-02-02T09:34:00+00:00

Filed under: Investigations, Afghanistan, WikiLeaks, Iraq

Pfc. Bradley Manning, suspected of leaking classified information to the whistleblower site WikiLeaks, was assessed by a mental health specialist as being unfit for duty in a war zone, but the Army sent him to Iraq anyway.

The decision on whether to deploy a soldier rests with his immediate superiors, but an Army investigation concludes that not going along with the specialist's recommendation may have contributed to the security breach down the road, the Washington Post reported Wednesday, quoting an unnamed military source.

Before his deployment overseas, Manning's behavior was a cause for concern at Fort Drum, N.Y., where he allegedly threw chairs at other soldiers and shouted at higher-ranking colleagues, McClatchy Newspapers said.

Manning, 23, an intelligence analyst, is accused of downloading classified Pentagon and State Department information on his personal computer in Iraq and transmitting some material to an unauthorized person. He is being held in solitary confinement at the Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Va.

A Manning support group, Bradleymanning.org, urged followers to phone the White House on Thursday to demand that the soldier's "human rights be respected" during his detention at Quantico.

The Army investigation, which is separate from a criminal probe, is underway to determine whether internal, procedural breakdowns led to the security breach. "There were serious leadership failures within the unit chain of command and gross negligence in the supervision of Pfc. Manning in Iraq," another source, familiar with the inquiry, told the Post.

Manning was deployed to Iraq in 2009 and 2010. His outbursts there got the attention of a master sergeant, who disabled his weapon, Manning's private lawyer said previously. He was later demoted for assaulting another soldier.

He has not been charged with leaking all of the information made available to WikiLeaks. The anti-secrecy site has posted tens of thousands of documents and cables relating to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The head of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, now under court supervision in London, is contesting extradition to Sweden, where authorities want to question him about sexual misconduct complaints. Assange won't say where WikiLeaks got the secret information.

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State of the Union: Obama Calls Investment in Innovation 'Our Sputnik Moment'

Alex Wagner — 2011-01-25T21:19:00+00:00

Filed under: Senate, Democrats, Republicans, State of the Union, Education, Health Care, Immigration, Social Security, Energy, Obama Administration, Afghanistan, Congress, Arms Control, Deficit, Unemployment, Military, White House, Economy, Health Care Reform, Barack Obama, Iraq

President Obama outlined an ambitious plan Tuesday to "win the future," urging renewed investment in American technology, infrastructure and education, while simultaneously calling for a more streamlined federal government and a reduction of the deficit.

In his State of the Union speech to a joint session of Congress -- some of whose members crossed the aisle in a symbolic show of bipartisanship -- Obama emphasized a common purpose and a shared future. "We will move forward together, or not at all," he said, "for the challenges we face are bigger than party, and bigger than politics."

Early in his address, Obama called attention to the empty seat that would have been occupied by Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was severely wounded during the Tucson shootings on Jan. 8.

The State of the Union and the Military: Balancing Defense With Debt

David Wood — 2011-01-21T22:54:00+00:00

Filed under: State of the Union, Budget, Foreign Policy, Obama Administration, Afghanistan, Congress, Deficit, Military, Analysis, Iraq

When Houston comes to play at San Antonio's AT&T Center next Friday night, seven people jammed in among the 19,000 Spurs and Rockets fans would represent roughly the proportion of the U.S. population fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq: 150,000 troops out of a nation of 308.7 million people, 0.00048 percent.

Just as stunning as America's non-participation in its wars is the cost the country is running up in the name of national security: more than $700 billion this year - twice as much as in 2001 and more than the rest of the world combined spends on defense.

The People's State of the Union: Giving Congress a Piece of Their Mind

Bruce Drake — 2011-01-20T23:10:00+00:00

Filed under: Senate, Democrats, State of the Union, Health Care, Polls, Afghanistan, Poll Watch, Congress, Deficit, Climate Change, Economy, Barack Obama, John Boehner

Barack Obama's 2011 State of the Union address on Tuesday will cover familiar ground: the economy, the war, the need for bipartisanship.

But below is a different kind of report -- distilled from opinion polls over the last 12 months about what the American public says it thinks (if, of course, the pollsters can be trusted).

If it were the topic of the address this Tuesday, here are the major talking points lawmakers and political leaders would hear:

We don't like you and think it's been a long time since you did a good job.

When Gallup averaged its poll numbers for the 2009-2010 session of Congress, the percentage of Americans who approved of its performance was 25 percent - one of the lowest annual averages in two decades, surpassed only by the 23 percent approval rating during the 2007-2008 session. At one point, in Gallup's December poll, the approval rate was as low as 13 points. That was generally the story in just about every major poll, along with numbers showing that Americans disapproved of both congressional Democrats and Republicans, and of the two major parties in general.

We also don't like the way you talk to each other and deal with each other, and frankly, we're tired of listening to it. Watching you is like spending a day with Frank and Estelle Costanza.

Last fall before the elections, a Pew Research Center/National Journal poll asked Americans their perception of how Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill were getting along, and 77 percent said they were "bickering" more - a big jump from April 2009 when 53 percent had that view. More recently, a Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted after the Arizona shootings found that eight in10 Americans say the tone of political discourse has been somewhat or very negative, or outright angry. (Thirty-one percent described the tone as angry).

That's not what Americans want. A Gallup poll conducted in mid-January found that 80 percent want President Obama to work for legislation that both parties can agree on even if some Democrats don't like it, and 83 percent say it is somewhat or very important that Republican congressional leaders do the same in working with Obama and the Democrats. That said, a large percentage of Republicans -- particularly those who say they agree with the tea party movement -- want their leaders to stand up to Obama rather than compromise, according to a Pew Research Center poll.

We put a new bunch of people in charge here this year, but you're all still on trial.

A Washington Post/ABC News poll in early December said that while a plurality of Americans thought the Republican takeover of the House was a good thing, the numbers weren't overwhelming -- 41 percent called it a good thing, 27 percent said it was a bad thing and 30 percent didn't think it made any difference, which means 57 percent weren't wowed. (The Post headline about its poll: "Public is not yet sold on GOP." That's not surprising since the Republicans had not taken charge yet, but certainly an indication that they will have to prove themselves now that they have the power).

A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll this month found that 51 percent don't expect congressional Republicans to bring much change, good or bad, while 25 percent say they will bring the right kind of change and 20 percent believe they will bring the wrong kind of change.

Americans still trust President Obama more than congressional Republicans to handle the economy. They favor Obama slightly more on whom they trust to cope with the main problems facing the nation.

Now, turning to matters that count: the economy still is in the toilet.

In a Quinnipiac poll conducted Jan. 4-11, eight in 10 Americans rated the economy as "not so good" or "poor," (with 43 percent in each of those categories). Seventy-three percent said the U.S. was still in a recession even though the National Bureau of Economic Research said it ended in June 2009. All the other major polls reflect the same gloomy assessment. Just about every poll shows that a majority of Americans still think the country is on the wrong track, although those numbers have come down a little.

Yeah, we're getting more worried about the deficit, but your top priority needs to be fixing unemployment.

The percentage of Americans concerned about the growing federal deficit has been inching up, but it is far behind the priority Americans put on dealing with unemployment and jobs. The Republicans made federal spending a top issue in the midterm elections and have vowed to make cutting the budget a similarly high priority in the new Congress. Now, they face the challenge of doing so when most Americans - despite saying they want action on the deficit - oppose many of the proposals that would deal with it.

We do think we're coming out of the woods a little, so don't mess it up.

Fifty-four percent of voters in a Quinnipiac University poll in early January said they believed the economy was beginning to recover.

Most of us don't like the health care reform law, but we're divided on what to do about it, so let's get clear on what we want to see done and what we don't.

A Quinnipiac University poll in early January said the public supported repeal of the health care reform measure by 48 percent to 43 percent with 8 percent undecided, although other polls produced an opposite result and found a softening of opposition to the law passed last March. A Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted in mid-January found that while Americans oppose the health care reform law by 50 percent to 45 percent - a finding that generally squares with most other polls during and after 2010 - only 18 percent favored outright repeal. Another 19 percent wanted to repeal just parts of it. A recent Pew Research Center poll said the number of Americans wanted to expand the law was nearly the same as those who wanted to repeal it.

Results like the Post/ABC poll are rooted in a variety of dynamics. While most polls find that a majority of Americans don't like the reform measure or don't think it will help them personally, significant majorities support individual provisions such as not letting insurers reject people with pre-existing conditions. By the same token, they mostly detest the requirement that every American must obtain insurance or be penalized.

Beyond the specific pros and cons of the measure itself, many polling analysts believe that views on the massive reform package were colored by the backlash against big government in general, whether it was a greater role in the health care system or plunging in to bail out the financial industry and major auto companies. "Right now we're not really fighting about health care," said Republican pollster Bill McInturff last October. "If you look at most Republican advertising and most of the issue-advocacy advertising that relates to health care, it's being used as a proof point about cost and the role of government, and it's a pretty powerful proof point."

Obama convinced most of us in 2008 that the right target was Afghanistan and not Iraq, but that's getting old, we don't see things getting better, and we're tired of it.

Although a recent Gallup poll suggested that views of the U.S. effort in Afghanistan had turned somewhat more positive, surveys toward the end of last year showed a rise in the number of Americans who have lost faith in whether the U.S. is doing the right thing in pursuing the war. A Washington Post/ABC News poll in December found 60 percent who said the war in Afghanistan had not been worth fighting while 34 percent said it was, the highest negative figure in Post/ABC News polls going back to 2007. The last time a majority said it was worth fighting was in December 2009, and then it was by a bare 52 percent.

Even after seeing all the photos of glaciers melting, and stranded polar bears, we're not as fired up about climate change as we used to be. Global warming? So yesterday. Al Gore? So yesterday.

Given that the economy has been in the tank for so long, and so many Americans are still hurting, it is not all that surprising that the environment has dropped on the priority list. It was at the bottom of 15 priorities in a Jan. 7-9 Gallup poll in terms of issues that Americans regarded as extremely or very important. A more recent Pew poll said Americans ranked global warming 21^st on a list of 22 "top policy priorities for 2011," just ahead of obesity.

Last March, Gallup did its annual update on the public's attitude toward the environment and found that Americans over the past two years had become less worried about the threat of global warming and less convinced that it is already happening. Forty-eight percent said the seriousness of global warming had been generally exaggerated, up from 30 percent in 2006. The Pew Research Center reported in October that 59 percent believed there was solid evidence of global warming, with 34 percent of them blaming it on human activity, but that overall number was down from 79 percent in July 2006.

Mr. President, it's a good time to ask whether you can get back the magic you had in 2008.

Obama's campaign mantra in 2008 besides, "Yes, we can!" was "Change you can believe in." Most 2010 polls found that most Americans didn't think much change had occurred in the way Washington did business since Obama's election. A USA Today/Gallup poll in mid-January said 70 percent believed, after his first two years in office, that Obama needed to do better when it came to "bringing about the changes this country needs."

Obama's job approval marks, which sagged into the mid-40s in many polls during late 2010, have started to recover some and inch back toward and even pass the 50 percent mark after the lame-duck session when many Americans approved of the deal he struck to extend the Bush-era tax cuts and were moved by his speech in Tucson paying tribute to the shooting victims. A majority still disapprove of the way Obama is handling the top issue facing the country - the economy - but by a smaller margin than in previous surveys.

But public opinion is mixed over how successful or not Obama was in his first two years and Americans are unsure of whether he will do better in the next two.

John Boehner, even though you're the Speaker now, a big chunk of Americans still don't know enough about you yet to have an opinion. Are you ready for that to change?

All during 2010, when Democrats tried to make John Boehner a household name in hopes of making him the same kind of lightning rod that then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi had become for Republicans, Boehner continued to glide by unknown to a large percentage of Americans. That may be changing with a recent Gallup poll showing that his increased visibility has pushed the number of those who see him favorably up by eight points since the elections. But about a third of the public still doesn't know enough about him to have a view one way or the other. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Pelosi began their jobs on high notes of public approval, only to leave with soaring negatives and as polarizing figures. Boehner isn't likely to cut quite as controversial a figure as either of them, but the day may come when he sheds a tear over losing his relative anonymity.

And let Sarah Palin know, we don't want her to be president in 2012.

A Washington Post/ABC News poll in mid-December found that six in 10 Americans rule out voting for Palin to be president. See a new poll on Palin? It's likely to contain bad news for her when it comes to the general electorate. While her loyal following certainly would make her a force if she jumped into the GOP primaries, the latest Marist Institute/McClatchy poll showed Obama with double-digit leads over Palin, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, but while Romney and Huckabee each got 81 percent support from fellow Republicans, Palin got only 66 percent. In the most recent Gallup poll, conducted after the shootings in Arizona and the controversy over her response to it, the number of those seeing Palin favorably fell to 38 percent, the lowest since she became a national figure in 2008.

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Biden Tell U.S Troops, 'You Will Be Proud' of Moving Iraq Forward

Tom Diemer — 2011-01-14T13:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Joe Biden, Terror, Obama Administration, Afghanistan, Iraq

Vice President Biden returned Friday from a four-day swing through Afghanistan, Pakistan, and finally Iraq, where he told U.S. troops they have successfully trained Iraqi forces "to the point now where they can be in the lead."

Yet in the next breath, the vice president cautioned that even though the Iraqis are getting stronger, "they're going to continue to need our assistance and your assistance for some time." While Biden said the Obama administration remains committed to pulling American troops out by the end of the year, he also suggested the U.S. would continue to train and equip the Iraqis, the Associated Press said.

"Our mission has fundamentally shifted since September," he said, referring to the departure of most combat troops. "But it's going to shift again at the end of 2011. We will probably be in the position of still maintaining and giving support."

Biden, who arrived in Iraq from a tour that began Monday in Afghanistan and then touched down in Pakistan, spoke emotionally to about 400 U.S. soldiers in Baghdad. "You are leaving a legacy, a legacy of not just having helped free a country, but helped getting the country on its feet," he said. "You will be proud" of what you "put in motion."

Biden said he thinks the Iraqis "are on the verge of literally creating a country that will be democratic, sustainable and, God willing, prosperous." But he also told the New York Times that Iraq still has "a long way to go."

It was Biden's seventh trip as vice president to the war-scarred country. He has emerged as President Obama's point man in the region. Is he effective? "I've got to say, it was positive across the board," a senior administration official told reporters traveling with Biden. "I think we came away feeling that the Iraqis . . . were in a good place."

More than 4,400 U.S. troops have been killed since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Biden said he was heartened that the casualty rate has decreased, and that he would not be returning to Washington with a "coffin strapped the floor of the aircraft as we take off."

Update: After Biden's departure, the AP said a dozens suspected terrorists, disguised in police uniforms, busted out of an Iraqi jail in one of Saddam Hussein's former palaces near the southern port city of Basra.

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Counterinsurgency Strategy Not Working in Afghanistan, Critics Say

David Wood — 2011-01-11T21:54:00+00:00

Filed under: Afghanistan

The counterinsurgency strategy the United States has relied on to win the Afghan war is producing disappointing progress at best and, at worst, is wasting billions of dollars and prolonging the nine-year war, according to a wide range of informed critics.

Experts on Afghanistan and on counterinsurgency, among them active-duty and retired military officers, analysts and academics, are pushing to have the U.S. mission in Afghanistan significantly narrowed in scope.

Their message, in brief: Drop the hearts 'n' minds stuff. Go kill the enemy.

It's increasingly clear to the critics, at least, that the enemy is not the Taliban, the local Afghan insurgents. It is, rather, the remnants of al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan who continue to plot against the United States.

Sending American soldiers and Marines headlong against Afghanistan's "inadequate governance, corruption, and abuse of power,'' as the most recent guidance of Gen. David Petraeus demands, is too broad, too costly and potentially self-defeating, many critics say.

"Most people in and around policy-making circles agree that the U.S. and NATO missions in Afghanistan should transition away from counterinsurgency and toward a strategy combining counter-terror activities with a train-and-equip mission,'' Andrew M. Exum, a former Army officer and adviser to Petraeus, wrote this week in his counterinsurgency blog.C. Christine Fair, a regional expert and Georgetown University professor, writes that "General David Petraeus' COIN doctrine simply may not apply to Afghanistan.

Whether their suggestions will have any impact is unclear. "People are so set on the current strategy that they become bothered and angry by a serious questioning,'' said a vociferous critic, Army Col. Gian P. Gentile, director of military history at West Point and a two-tour combat veteran of Iraq.

"There are alternatives'' to the current strategy, Gentile said in an interview. "But they are hard to articulate with an Army and senior leaders who've been doing this for nine years and are morally committed to it because we've shed blood and they believe they can make it work.''

With the Obama administration's war strategy being questioned, Vice President Joe Biden (who has advocated abandoning counterinsurgency and focusing only on killing al-Qaeda terrorists) flew into Kabul Monday to confer with Petraeus, commander of U.S. and allied forces, U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry and Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

"This is a pivot point in our policy,'' an unnamed senior official confided to reporters aboard Biden's plane en route to Afghanistan Monday. On Tuesday, Biden issued a statement seeming to back away from a full-fledged counterinsurgency strategy. "It is not our intention to govern or nation-build,'' he said. "This is the responsibility of the Afghan government and they are fully capable of it.''

Petraeus, co-author of the 2006 military manual on counterinsurgency, often puts a forward spin on the war, saying that the U.S.-led coalition finally has "all the inputs right,'' meaning he has enough troops (97,000 U.S. and 40,000 European and others), enough civilian advisers and trainers, and the right strategy, to win.

But he and the Obama administration, in what seemed a tacit acknowledgment of slow progress, last November agreed to extend the U.S. and NATO commitment for another four years, through the end of 2014. Previously, Obama had said flatly that in July of this year, "our troops will begin to come home.''

One disconcerting sign of the lack of progress is that tips from the Afghan public about newly emplaced IEDs -- a key indicator of how safe people feel from Taliban retribution -- have declined. According to data released by the Pentagon's Joint IED Defeat Organization, the number of IEDs turned in each month fell from 34 in January 2010 to 12 in May, while U.S. and allied casualties (killed and wounded) by IEDs rose from 174 in January to 284 in May.

Another indication of what's going wrong comes in a recent chilling series in the British newspaper the Guardian. Reporter Gaith Abdul-Ahad talked with key Taliban leaders, including an elderly mid-level Taliban administrator in the eastern city of Khost. He explained a key reason why the U.S. strategy of protecting the people against the Taliban isn't working.

"The government is besieged in its fortresses and can't come to the people, and corruption is paralyzing it,'' the elder told the Guardian. "One of the main reasons for our popularity is the failure of this government." The Taliban official explained that he supervises local governing councils set up by the Taliban in "liberated'' areas.

"I am a representative of the movement and I walk among the people and everyone knows me,'' the elderly Taliban said. "I move between the people and the commanders, watching the commanders' behavior. I listen to the people and convey the picture to the supreme leaders," he said.

At home, the strategy debate rumbling across Washington hinges on a critical but unresolved question: When fighting a guerrilla force entrenched within the population, do you win by defeating the bad guys militarily -- killing or capturing their leaders, cutting their supply lines and offering the survivors a safe return to society? Or do you push them away from the population and, by providing security, good government services, education and economic progress, win the population over to the government's side?

Since the U.S. attacked and overthrew the Taliban government in Afghanistan in late 2001, its strategy has wandered back and forth. Lt. Gen. David Barno, who led U.S. forces there from 2003 to 2005, quickly discovered that sending troops out into the countryside on raids wasn't working. "It was putting your fist into a bucket of water and taking it back out again, with very little to no impact on the enemy,'' Barno said in an interview.

Instead, he sent his battalions out to live in critical areas, seeking out and working with local leaders and enabling the first national elections to take place in 2004. (In another depressing sign, more people took part in that election six years ago than in any since.) Barno tripled the number of Provincial Reconstruction Teams, from four to 12, to spur economic development and local government.

But that effort to win over the local population didn't continue after Barno left, especially after NATO took over in 2007.

He acknowledged, however, that the promise of "hearts and minds'' counterinsurgency -- that the Americans can bring to local people a dramatically better way of life -- has turned out to be misleading. For many Afghans, life has improved since 2001: More children are in school and security in many areas has tightened. But it is also true that the expectations of most Afghans were "grossly inflated'' when American troops arrived, Barno said. Over the nine years that have followed, the reality of what the United States has delivered "has fallen short,'' he said.

That's the chief problem with the U.S. strategy, according to Amitai Etzione, professor at George Washington University in Washington. By pursuing "in effect a do-over of the social, economic, cultural and political foundations'' of Afghanistan, "one invited failure by setting goals that cannot be reached and by raising expectations that are bound to be disappointed,'' he wrote this month in Joint Forces Quarterly, a professional journal published by the National Defense University.

Among the inherent promises of counterinsurgency that are unrealistic or counterproductive, in the view of Etzione and others: building a strong, secular, democratic and effective central government, cleaning up official corruption, establishing women's rights, creating a Western-style Afghan army, and holding democratic elections as a panacea to Afghanistan's problems.

Building schools for girls, for example, reflects American values -- but alienates large sections of Afghanistan's Pashtun population from which the Taliban insurgency springs.

Expanding, training and equipping the Afghan army make sense, Etzione writes. But requiring Afghan soldiers to carry the American M-16 rifle makes no sense: the Russian-designed Kalashnikov is superior in the local heat and dust, and is familiar and simple enough for new soldiers to use.

Elections, a key part of the U.S. effort, have been divisive occasions, seeming to unite Afghans only in their belief that the process was deeply corrupt. Straining to produce a strong, secular central government makes little sense in a land of strong belief that Islam should govern daily life, and that the best government is local government.

Counterinsurgency is called for in Afghanistan, Etzione concludes. "But if COIN is to work, it must be profoundly recast.'' For a start, he writes, "We should leave the local people to work out what they will tolerate and what they will balk at.''

Two recent studies suggest a different way forward. The Center for a New American Security, a centrist Washington think tank, recommends shifting decisively away from the current large-scale counterinsurgency campaign to focus the military effort on al-Qaeda. Fighting the Taliban should be increasingly a job for the Afghan army and police. U.S. and allied forces could be cut substantially to between 25,000 and 35,000, the CNAS report said.

And the United States should refocus its efforts on helping build local government -- not the central government.

A similar study published this week jointly by the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for the Study of War also calls for a refocus on local, not national, government and security forces. The report, co-authored by Fred and Kimberly Kagan, acknowledges that achieving a better balance of power between Kabul and local towns and districts is critical. But that "will be very difficult and it may prove impossible,'' they conclude.

The CNAS report, written by Barno and Exum, also ends on a grim note: "After nine years of inconclusive fighting,'' they write, "all outcomes are likely to be suboptimal for the United States, its allies and the Afghan people.''

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Darrell Issa, House Oversight Chief, Could Do Well by Doing Good

Matt Lewis — 2011-01-05T23:10:00+00:00

Filed under: Republicans, Scandal, Investigations, Obama Administration, Afghanistan, 2010 Elections, Conservatives, Matt Lewis and the News

Rep. Darrell Issa, the incoming leader of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has generated much attention and speculation lately about his effort to hunt down "job killing" federal regulations.

While Democrats are hoping to cast the California Republican as a hyperpartisan committee chairman set on politically motivated "witch hunts," Issa could surprise them. He is well positioned to do more than generate publicity; he could reveal real examples of waste and malfeasance.

Based on Issa's comments last October -- when he said President Obama "has been one of the most corrupt presidents in modern times" -- Issa is easily cast as the villain. But Issa's more recent comments have been less strident, suggesting he won't be so easily limned an extremist.

Issa, the grandson of Lebanese immigrants, is one of the wealthiest members of Congress. He has always had outsized ambitions, but seems to have learned the advantage of being less obvious about them. Issa helped fund the early effort to recall former California governor Gray Davis, ostensibly because he wanted to become governor. His opponents used that against him, derailing, for a time, his statewide political aspirations.

But it's not absurd to think that a crusading public official with subpoena powers might be rewarded for his efforts. It's been done before. In fact, there is a rich tradition of it.

Thomas Dewey's political career really took off in 1935, when he was appointed special prosecutor in New York County, a job which essentially involved taking on the mob. Dewey toppled New York crime boss "Lucky" Luciano for his involvement in the prostitution racket, put away the former head of the New York Stock Exchange for embezzlement, and prosecuted an American Nazi leader for embezzlement. Dewey's reputation as a prosecutor made him a rock star, propelling him to the governorship of New York, and within a whisker of the presidency in 1948.

The man who beat Dewey in 1948 had similar success as an investigator. As a senator in the early 1940s, Harry Truman chaired the Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program. As the Truman Library notes,

Known as the 'Truman Committee,' it was given broad powers to investigate the terms of defense contracts, how they were awarded, how contractors performed, the utilization of small businesses, and the effect of the defense program on labor. The committee -- often at odds with the military services -- became a "sympathetic critic" of the War Production Board and helped raise public confidence in the way the war was being managed. Estimates of money saved by the committee range as high as $15 billion, and his work brought Truman into the national spotlight.

Sen. Truman's work on the committee ultimately helped propelled him to become FDR's veep in 1944.

With war raging in Afghanistan, could Issa follow the Truman model? When pressed on a recent episode of MSNBC's "Hardball" to predict where the most waste could be found, Politico's Jonathan Martin answered, "contracts in Afghanistan." Perhaps Issa will take up the cause?

Truman's example was replicated by Tennessee senator Estes Kefauver, the first chairman of the United States Senate Special Committee to Investigate Crime in Interstate Commerce from 1950 until April 1951 -- also known as the "Kefauver Commission." This special committee investigated organized crime which crossed state borders.

Kefauver twice sought the Democratic nomination for president, and in 1956 was selected by the Democratic National Convention to be the running mate of losing presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson.

A few years later, a ruthless young congressman from California was able to parlay his role as an investigator into the vice presidency (and ultimately, the presidency). Richard Nixon made a name for himself as a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee.

As PBS noted,

Nixon recognized that anti-Communism was growing in popularity in the United States. He had seized upon the issue in his campaign for Congress and had ridden an anti-Communist wave to the House of Representatives. Now he would use HUAC as his springboard to national celebrity.

Nixon had the benefit of working on a cause, which was both politically expedient (going after Communists was "red meat" for his conservative base) and legitimate (Communists really had infiltrated the government). Ironically, Nixon's future presidency spurred its own investigation -- and the careers of some of the lawmakers who led the probe.

As a result of the Watergate scandal, Republican senator Howard Baker of Tennessee became an influential ranking minority member of a Senate committee chaired by North Carolina Democrat Sam Ervin. It was Baker who made history -- and transformed himself into a national political figure -- by famously asking: "What did the president know and when did he know it?" Several future GOP nominees considered Baker as their running mate, and he ultimately ran (and lost) his own race for president in 1980. Still, Baker became Senate minority leader, no small feat.

Clearly, being part of a high-profile investigation can be beneficial to one's career, but you are playing with dangerous tools. A prime example of someone who went too far was long-ago Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy. More recently, Indiana Republican congressman Dan Burton went after the Clinton administration in the 1990s, using more than 1,000 subpoenas. Ultimately Burton made his own behavior the issue. After it came out that Burton had employed amateur forensics -- firing a pistol at a pumpkin in his back yard while trying to determine if former White House Counsel Vince Foster was murdered -- he became easy for Clinton's defenders to dismiss.

According to Brookings Institution's Stephen Hess, a veteran staffer of the Eisenhower and Nixon administrations and an adviser to Presidents Ford and Carter, Issa isn't well positioned currently to parlay his investigations into something huge. "The ones who were great," Hess tells me, "had a particular investigation [to focus on]. They weren't investigating investigating."

Likewise, politicians ranging from Rudy Giuliani to Eliot Spitzer have had mixed results when a perception took hold that their investigations were fueled by political ambition more than good-government considerations. In addition, it's far easier to make political hay out of pursuing mobsters, obscure government bureaucrats, or corporate CEOs than going after the other party's elected officials, who have constituencies of their own.

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Holly Petraeus, Wife of Afghan War Commander, in Line for Consumer Post

Politics Daily Staff — 2011-01-04T12:40:00+00:00

Filed under: Obama Administration, National Security, Afghanistan, Military, Economy, Barack Obama

Holly Petraeus, wife of the top NATO commander in the Afghanistan war, is expected to be named this week to a post with the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, specializing in protecting military families from predatory lenders.

The Huffington Post and Politico on Tuesday reported the likely move. The start up of the financial consumer-protection agency, a key element in the new Wall Street reform law, is being overseen by Elizabeth Warren, an assistant to President Obama and adviser to the Treasury Department. Petraeus' husband, Gen. David Petraeus, leads the U.S. war effort against the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.

5 Hair-Raising Crises in Foreign Affairs/National Security We Somehow Avoided in 2010

David Wood — 2010-12-27T23:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Foreign Policy, National Security, Afghanistan, Nuclear Proliferation, Military, Iraq

Year-end lists always look back at people and events of significance, but sometimes it's just as instructive to recall things that didn't take place. Here are five -- among many -- of the most hair-raising crises and terrifying emergencies that we managed to skirt in 2010:

North Korea didn't start a nuclear war. The brutal and xenophobic regime in Pyongyang continued its fusillade of incendiary rhetoric and bluster, vowing once again to unleash nuclear war if South Korea and the United States continued their "provocative'' military exercises. But the North's leadership stayed safely inert, perhaps -- perhaps -- recognizing that unleashing their large but antiquated military against the 28,500 U.S. ground troops in South Korea, U.S. air power and the powerful Republic of Korea military would be a suicidal proposition, let alone actually using one of its nuclear weapons. It's even possible that 2011 will see the relaunching of six-party talks on ending North Korea's nuclear weapons program. But first, the White House said, the North must end its "belligerent actions.''

Iraq didn't explode into renewed civil war. The U.S. invasion of 2003 toppled the Saddam Hussein regime and unintentionally ignited a brutal civil war that killed 4,430 American troops, took the lives of perhaps 150,000 Iraqi civilians, and forced some 4.5 million Iraqis from their homes. The war left Iraq deeply split along sectarian lines and seething in anger, frustration and bitterness, seemingly ripe for exploitation by rival militias and powerful terrorist gangs. Yet at midyear, the United States declared its combat mission over and pulled out nearly 100,000 troops. For now, at least, Iraqi passions have been diverted into politics.

Neither did the Middle East, where a decade of horrific bloodshed and violence gave way, slowly and fitfully but unmistakably, to negotiations. On one of the toughest issues -- security -- Israelis and Palestinians are actually cooperating on a practical, working level, notes Robert Danin, a Mideast expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. "Palestinian security forces are working for the first time in earnest to provide law and order and combat terrorism. Israeli security officials acknowledge this, as well as the unprecedented security cooperation between the two sides,'' he writes. " It marks a fundamental shift from times past when Israel suspected the Palestinian leadership of turning a blind eye toward, or even encouraging, terrorist activities.''

Pakistan survived intact. High on the list of everyone's nightmare scenarios is the collapse of Pakistan's weak, nuclear-armed civilian government, besieged by a bankrupting depression, a debilitating flood, a deadly terrorist insurgency and missile strikes by CIA drone aircraft on its ungovernable territory along the border with Afghanistan. Somehow the government of Prime Minister Asif Ali Zardari skated along the edge of catastrophe, staving off, for now, another of the military coups d'etat that have kept Pakistan under army rule for more than half of its 63 years of independence.

Terrorist bombs didn't explode in Times Square; Portland, Oregon; or Baltimore, thanks to good luck (the Times Square bomb fizzled) and good police work (undercover FBI agents thwarted the intended bombings in Portland and Baltimore). Another notable fizzle: the parcel bomb plot attempted by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Violent death in the wreckage, panic and over-reaction might have ensued had any of these attacks succeeded.

Top terrorism officials are convinced that despite their best efforts, an attack will eventually succeed. So watch out in 2011.

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Busy With Afghanistan, the U.S. Military Has No Time to Train for Big Wars

David Wood — 2010-12-27T23:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Afghanistan, Military, Analysis

We have learned through painful experience that the wars we fight are seldom the wars we planned.
-- Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Feb. 1, 2010

Just after a cold, rainy dawn, a U.S. Army battalion under the command of Lt. Col. Charles B. Smith took up positions along a low Korean ridgeline with orders to stop the enemy tank columns racing toward them. The Americans were lightly armed draftees assigned to peacetime occupation duties in Japan. They'd never trained for major combat. But they wore the uniform of the most powerful nation on earth.

They expected a short skirmish: When the enemy saw who they were dealing with, the soldiers told themselves, they'd turn tail and flee. But the North Koreans who came lunging at them were not deterred that July morning in 1950. The GIs held out valiantly but finally shattered, stumbling into a retreat so hasty that they left their dead and wounded behind.

The painful story of Task Force Smith is once again being told amid growing anxiety that the United States is so focused on today's missions that it has neglected to prepare for what may come next.

The risk of being unready for major combat operations is partly a matter of choice: Defense Secretary Robert Gates has directed the military to focus its time, resources and energy on winning the counterinsurgency struggle in Afghanistan. That's the kind of conflict the United States is likely to be entangled in for the foreseeable future, according to current Defense Department plans.

It is also true, senior officials acknowledge, that the armed forces lack the time to train for and equipment to fight a major conflict that might ignite from friction with Iran, say, or China, or deal with a completely unanticipated crisis that requires American forces to quickly intervene -- like Korea, 1950.

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