Morning Brief 3/24
Iraq More car bombs. Khalilzad accuses Iran of meddling in Iraq. Of course it’s a civil war, writes Krauthammer in today’s WaPo: "…Those who have decided that because of ‘civil war’ it cannot be done have been unreasonably panicked by something that has been with us all along." David Ignatius: "Those big ‘Plan for Victory’ ...
Iraq
Iraq
More car bombs. Khalilzad accuses Iran of meddling in Iraq. Of course it’s a civil war, writes Krauthammer in today’s WaPo: "…Those who have decided that because of ‘civil war’ it cannot be done have been unreasonably panicked by something that has been with us all along."
David Ignatius: "Those big ‘Plan for Victory’ signs at hi[Bush’s] rally in Wheeling, W.Va., this week read more like an exhortation than a statement of fact."
Victor David Hanson at NRO: "[T]he proper question is not whether there were tragic errors of judgment in Iraq — but to what degree were they qualitatively different from past errors that are the stuff of war, to what degree were they addressed and corrected, and to what degree did their commission impair the final verdict of the mission?"
Foreign Policy
In the NYT, Andrew Kohut argues that Americans aren’t really drifting to isolationism. In the LAT, Madeline Albright files a real blah op-ed, "Good versus evil isn’t a strategy." She also reminds us that "hope is not a policy."
Afghan Christian Convert
The judge has ruled that the Christian convert will go to trial. Condi called Karzai to implore him to intervene.
Nina Shea at NRO: The Sharia problem that’s not going to go away.
Jay Bryant: "[O]oddly enough, the Rahman case in fact represents progress."
In the Asia Times, Syed Saleem Shahzad: "International leaders whose troops are stationed in the country are thus playing right into the hands of the clerics by taking the moral high ground and threatening withdrawal."
Iran
A must-read from Amir Taheri, on why talking to Iran could be America’s first big mistake in the showdown. Interesting to note: "It is no accident that scholars in Tehran have just rediscovered the set of agreements that Iran had signed with the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century. Known as the Erzerum treaties, these documents give Iran a droit de regard (the right of oversight) over Iraq’s principal Shiite centres of Najaf , Karbala and Kazemayn (now a suburb of Baghdad )."
Tidbits: Sanctions for Belarus. Blaming the Jewish lobby misses the point, says Joseph Massad. Danish Imams want an apology. More on Brazilian ethanol. Dig up a quote from this interview with Sudan’s foreign minister. India asks Pakistan for a peace treaty. Intellectual property run amok. Energy types reflect on Iraq’s oil woes.
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