Blake Hounshell's blog

I haven't read the former Alaska governor's new book, but I see that she's already brought the crazy in an interview with ABC News.

"I disagree with the Obama administration" on Israeli settlements, Palin told Barbara Walters. Fair enough. It sure seems like the administration's heavy focus on getting Benjamin Netanyahu to commit to a settlement freeze has backfired, making the Israeli prime minister more popular than ever and exposing the impotence of Palestinian leader Mamoud Abbas in the process.

But that's not what Palin meant.

"I believe that the Jewish settlements should be allowed to be expanded upon, because that population of Israel is, is going to grow," she continued. "More and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead. And I don't think that the Obama administration has any right to tell Israel that the Jewish settlements cannot expand."

This is, quite frankly, morally and strategically obtuse. Setting aside the "right" of Israel to take land that the Palestinians see as theirs, as Israeli author Gershom Gorenberg wrote last January in FP, the settlements are hugely problematic for peace:

The message written on the landscape is simple: Every day, the settlements expand. Every day, Israel grows more entangled in the West Bank. To a large degree, the Israeli and Palestinian publics have accepted the need for a two-state solution. But time, and the construction crews, are working against it. No one knows exactly where the point of no return is—when so many Israelis will have moved into so many homes beyond the pre-1967 border that there is no going back. But each passing day brings that tipping point nearer. If a solution is not achieved quickly, it might soon be out of reach.

This is why, from their inception, successive American presidents of both parties have denounced this colonization of the West Bank, although rarely, such as when George H.W. Bush put real pressure on the Israelis by temporarily holding up loan guarantees, have they done more about it than talk. Even George W. Bush, the bulk of whose Israel policy can be fairly summed up as "Let Ariel Sharon do what he wants," at least expressed his displeasure over the settlements every now and again.

So Palin is way out there on the lunatic fringe, supporting an Israeli policy that all serious people understand to be deeply corrosive to the prospects for peace and to Israel itself. But I'd also note that her lack of precision in talking about the issue, while hardly surprising, betrays a continued lack of familiarity with even the most basic nuances of the conflict. She doesn't, for instance, make any distinction between existing settlements and new ones, which is at the heart of the debate right now.

It's depressing to think that this lazy, uninformed woman might have been a heartbeat away from the presidency.

The Pakistani newspaper Dawn is reporting that Forbes magazine has named Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani, the Pakistani prime minister, the 38th most powerful man in the world. Forbes doesn't seem to have published its new list online yet, so I can't verify the story, but if it's true, it's a bizarre choice. I'm not even sure Gilani is the most 38th most powerful man in Pakistan, let alone the world.

Off the top of my head, here are a few Pakistanis who have more juice than Gilani:

• Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the Army chief of staff
• Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the head of the ISI intelligence service
• All the Army corps commanders
• Various top ISI deputies
• President Asif Ali Zardari
• Arguably, Nawaz Sharif, the opposition leader, and his brother Shahbaz, the chief minister of Punjab province
• Mian Muhammad Mansha Yaha, the richest man in Pakistan, among other powerful businessmen and landholders
• Etc.

New York Times journalist David Rohde's account of his kidnapping and subsequent escape from Taliban militants affiliated with the Haqqani network in North Waziristan region of Pakistan makes for riveting reading. It's an amazing story, and one has to admire Rohde's fortitude and survival instincts during his seven-month ordeal.

Read all of it, but I just have one comment about this bit from the epilogue:

My suspicions about the relationship between the Haqqanis and the Pakistani military proved to be true. Some American officials told my colleagues at The Times that Pakistan's military intelligence agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, turns a blind eye to the Haqqanis' activities. Others went further and said the ISI provided money, supplies and strategic planning to the Haqqanis and other Taliban groups.

Pakistani officials told my colleagues that the contacts were part of a strategy to maintain influence in Afghanistan to prevent India, Pakistan's archenemy, from gaining a foothold. One Pakistani official called the Taliban "proxy forces to preserve our interests."

Meanwhile, the Haqqanis continue to use North Waziristan to train suicide bombers and bomb makers who kill Afghan and American forces. They also continue to take hostages.

We'll see how long this relationship holds, but if you need any convincing that the ISI at least tacitly allows the Haqqani folks to do their thing unmolested, consider this: To get to South Waziristan, where the Pakistani Army is engaged in a fierce battle with the Pakistani Taliban around the Makin area, which is dominated by the Mehsud tribal grouping, some units had to drive through North Waziristan. In fact, they drove right through the center of Miram Shah, the regional capital and Haqqani stronghold where Rohde made his escape -- and there was just one isolated IED attack along the way.

What does that tell us? At a minimum, it tells us that the powers that be in North Waziristan are being very cooperative and not coming to the Mehsuds' aid. And supposedly, the Haqqanis and their local allies, led by another Pakistani Taliban leader named Hafiz Gul Bahadar, have explicitly pledged not to interfere. The Pakistani military has struck a number of much-criticized peace deals with Bahadar over the last few years, and some say the security establishment in Rawalpindi is all too happy to keep this relationship alive so long as the Haqqanis and Bahadar only launch attacks in Afghanistan, not at home.

American officials have been hinting in recent weeks, however, that the Pakistani military is simply tackling one challenge at a time -- the Mehsuds -- and the Haqqanis may be next on their hit list. That's certainly what AfPak envoy Richard Holbrooke and Amb. Ann Patterson seem to be telling Frontline, though one can detect a little daylight between the two U.S. diplomats. In Holbrooke's words, the Pakistanis "are quite clear in their own minds that Haqqani poses a threat to both Afghanistan and Pakistan." Patterson says, "[W]e're working with them on these, and I think they increasingly see these [other] groups as a threat as well" -- but Pakistan is not willing to turn on them yet.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is still conducting airstrikes in North Waziristan, which is still teeming with foreign militants and where it's widely thought that Osama bin Laden has hidden out at one point or another during the last few years. This is definitely a story to watch.

Dan Drezner howls at the Maldives government's brilliant stunt of holding an underwater cabinet meeting (more photos here and here) to make the case that "if we can't save the Maldives today, you can't save the rest of the world tomorrow," and wonders if "a rational, cost-benefit analysis of how to allocate climate change resources between mitigation and adaptation" would really redound to the benefit of such small-island countries.

I doubt it -- and the world has already pretty much already decided to let these nations drown. Back in 2007, when I attended the U.N.'s high-level meeting on climate change, one of the issues on the table was what level of global warming we could all tolerate. Was it 1 degree celsius, which was already upon us? One-point-five? Two?

The island countries, which have their own caucus in the General Assembly, were calling for 1.5 degrees (and still are). I remember being shocked, however, at their level of disorganization. Given that climate change is such an existential threat to them, why did they only announce their press conference on the matter 15 minutes beforehand, and why did they only send their U.N. ambassadors, rather than the heads of state? I think I was one of three members of the press in attendance.

The Maldives' new president, Mohammed Nasheed, seems a little more media-savvy than his predecessor, the dictator Mamoon Abdul Gayoom. He has to be: The highest point in the Maldives is just under 8 feet, and the country's average elevation is somewhere between 4 and 7 feet. But that's the average -- most of the country is still lower than that, and the U.N.'s climate panel estimated in 2007 that sea levels would rise anywhere from 7.2 to 23.2 inches, which would make the Maldives extremely vulnerable to storm surges or major sea swells (it should be noted that the U.N. report emphasized that its sea-level projections were "not an upper bound"). If current trends hold, by the end of this century, the bulk of the country's 300,000 inhabitants will have to find other places to live.

But in calling for the 1.5 degree target, Nasheed seems to be fighting a battle he's already lost. In the end, a rough scientific and political consensus has settled around 2 degrees -- and even with that, very little has been done to make the emissions cuts needed, and there are certainly no binding commitments to do so. Would 2 degrees of warming doom the Maldives? I don't know. But it sure looks to me like the world's power brokers are willing to roll the dice on this one.

The Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb, crowing about various members of Congress pulling out of left-leaning Jewish lobbying group J Street's first annual conference, writes:

I expect there will be many more members of Congress who were likewise "unaware" that their names were being used to boost the credibility of a group that supports engagement with Hamas, opposes sanctions on Iran (only six members of the House share that position), and believes the primary obstacle to peace in the Middle East is Israeli settlements.

These ideas actually aren't so bad! There are strong cases to be made that Hamas is a rational actor that can be negotiated with (and in fact even Israel negotiates with Hamas from time to time), that sanctions on Iran would only empower the Revolutionary Guards, and that settlements are in fact the main obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peace.

I think members of Congress would benefit from an open debate on these topics, and it wouldn't hurt Israeli Amb. Michael Oren -- who controversially declined an invitation to attend -- to hear some other points of view.

According to the Forward, however, some members of the American Jewish community apparently think otherwise:

Shunning J Street may be a result of domestic Jewish politics as much as an expression of foreign policy. A diplomatic source told the Forward that Israeli officials received calls from Jewish organizations stating that they "have a problem" with J Street. The groups, which the source would not name, argued that J Street's criticism of other Jewish organizations should not be endorsed by the government of Israel. 

GQ has released its annual list of the "50 most powerful people in D.C.," and setting aside the inherently flawed nature of such lists (let alone the idea that GQ is well-positioned to do this one), it's certainly fun to play the old Washington parlor game. So let's play!

In FP's world, the most noteworthy snub is listing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton 18th, after CIA director Leon Panetta (whose boss Dennis Blair is not even listed and who presides over a much-diminished agency), after former Vice President Dick Cheney (who, though influential, is out of office), and after various members of Congress. Has State fallen this far? And has Hillary really lost clout since leaving the Senate (GQ previously ranked her as high as 8th), where she chaired no committees?

Meanwhile, apparently young GOP Rep. Eric Cantor rates but National Security Advisor James L. Jones doesn't (NSC chief of staff Denis McDonough, however, does); New Yorker journalist Jane Mayer makes the cut but Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen doesn't; White House climate advisor Carol Browner is supposedly powerful but Chamber of Commerce head Tom Donahue apparently isn't; CNAS CEO Nate Fick is listed but AIPAC Executive Director Howard Kohr isn't thought to be all that influential. And I'm sure that Chinese Amb. Zhou Wenzhong, whose country holds more than $2 trillion in U.S. Treasury bills, will be surprised to learn that Michelle Obama's fashion advisor outranks him in Washington.

(It also seems that nobody told GQ that former NSC chief of staff Mark Lippert has already left the White House to return to the Navy.)

I do, however, appreciate the inclusion of Josh Wolman, the director of admissions at Sidwell Friends. He may not have AC-130s and helicopter gunships at his disposal, but he does have the ability to make all the parents above him on the list quiver in fear.

Think Stanley McChrystal's comments in London crossed a line generals should not cross? Try Pakistan, where the military has just shown a bald-faced willingness to dictate political outcomes when its core interests are threatened.

The story: After days of public protests, top Pakistani commanders have gone dramatically public with their objections to some of the strings attached to the new $7.5 billion U.S. aid bill, and especially to a provision requiring the State Department to report on whether the Islamabad government is maintaining "effective civilian control over the military."

I'm sure my colleagues at the AfPak Channel will be weighing in on this topic tomorrow, but here are some quick late-night questions.

First, why didn't anyone in Washington see this firestorm coming? Didn't the Pakistani military raise objections quietly during the many weeks this bill has been in the works? As cosponsor Sen. John Kerry announced when the bill was unanimously approved in the Senate, "The legislation passed today ... is the product of two months of bicameral, bipartisan, and inter-branch consultation." So there was ample time and opportunity for the Pakistani military establishment to make its red lines clear.

Second, how did we in the media fail to understand the likely depth of Pakistani domestic opposition to some of Kerry-Lugar's provisions? Were we too distracted by the McChrystal review and the U.S. domestic debate over Afghanistan?

Third, why is the three-way nonaggression pact between the civilian government led by President Asif Ali Zardari, the political opposition led by the Sharif brothers, and the military -- one of the unheralded achievements of U.S. AfPak envoy Richard Holbrooke -- suddenly breaking down? Is there something else going on?

One obvious answer: politics. As this Daily Times editorial explains, the opposition is trying to force midterm elections and has "decided to go for the jugular" on Kerry-Lugar. It's notable, too, that the military's top general met this week with Punjab chief minister Shahbaz Sharif, the brother of former prime minister and bitter Zardari foe Nawaz Sharif -- raising the specter of a return to overt military involvement in politics. The civilian government is now reportedly in a panic, and the Pakistani media is swarming all over the controversy while Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Reza Gilani furiously backtrack on their once-vocal support for the bill.

Some of what is happening in Pakistan is surely the usual Kabuki theater, but there could be real consequences for U.S. goals in the region. As Imtiaz Gul warned last week on this Web site, if Kerry-Lugar's conditions "are viewed as coercive by Pakistani officials, they could prompt elements within the civil-military establishment to stonewall the aid and obstruct military cooperation." Never underestimate the power of parochialism.

One other casuality of this fight could be Pakistan's foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, who has been visiting the United States and is being fingered by anonymous sources in the Pakistani press for failing to protect the country's national interests -- i.e., those of the military establishment. And some powerful folks in the military are clearly gunning for Amb. Hussain Haqqani, who has a long track record of criticizing the military and its meddling in politics, and is being accused of failing to keep the Army adequately informed.

Those two men, and the Zardari government, might survive this latest crisis of Pakistani democracy, but I'd bet the military takes its pound of flesh one way or another. Last July, when the civilian government clumsily tried to tame the ISI by putting it under the control of the Interior Ministry, the military swiftly showed everyone who's boss by rejecting the move. I expect this fight to be no different, and there are already signs that the Pakistani government may now reject the aid bill it had negotiated.

If that's indeed the case, then one of the barely disguised aims of the Kerry-Lugar bill -- boosting the civilian leadership over the Army brass -- will have backfired in spectacular fashion.

Noted terrorism expert and FP contributor Jarret Brachman had dinner with former Pakistani dictator President Pervez Musharraf last Friday, and wrote about it here (welcome to the world of new media, Pervez). For the record, Brachman describes Musharraf as "a gracious, humble and serious military man."

Some highlights of their conversation:

- He honestly believes that he transformed Pakistan from a backwards third-world garbage pit to a land of new opportunities and prosperity. That, for him, is the legacy that matters most.

- He seemed disengaged from al-Qaida overall, at one point forgetting the name of the jihadi godfather, Abdullah Azzam.

- He had no working knowledge of al-Qaida’s senior leadership below Bin Laden or Al-Zawahiri, which makes me think that he outsourced the entire al-Qaida portfolio.

- He stonewalled me on every question I asked involving Iran and Saudi Arabia. In fact, in his keynote addressed later that night entitled, “Internal and External Dynamics of Pakistan,” he didn’t mention either country. He also steered clear of my questions on the Pakistani ISI.

- He advanced the (now well accepted as false rumor) statement that Bin Laden is on kidney dialysis. When asked if UBL was in Pakistan, he responded by saying that’s like him asking if UBL is in the United States, “nothing more than unfounded speculation…”

- He seems to truly believe that he did everything he could against al-Qaida but that it was a series of American missteps, historically and currently, in Afghanistan that created the mess that exists today.

Makes you wonder who was running the al Qaeda portfolio in Pakistan, doesn't it?