Steve Clemons

Twice at the helm California Governor Edmund G. "Jerry" Brown has called for Californians to get 12,000 MW of their energy from local power distribution grids by 2020. 

This is a tough target -- and whether its a significant bump up in deployment of solar, wind, and other locally deployable resources -- there are going to be hurdles hitting this target, but clearly the effort is to push communities to pick up their own energy needs by their own bootstraps.

Practically every county in California has a different 'normal' in the permitting and regulatory process for local energy deployment.  Financing for larger scale solar and wind projects is getting easier -- but still not equal to other energy projects.  And costs overall still are higher than other traditional coal and other fossil fuel driven energy plants.

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The best places to meet the world's most interesting national security and foreign policy personalities are no longer Washington or London or Paris.  Rather, highest on the list are Beijing, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Doha.

Many years ago, I met Lt. General Asad Durrani in Beijing thanks to a conference organized by Australia's Monash University.  We have been acquainted and communicating since. I remember arriving late to the conference and rushing in as the brash, younger-than-I-am-now upstart and sitting down at one of the lunch tables of ten.  I quickly met everyone and heard that Durrani was a general from Pakistan.  That's all I knew. 

I asked him quickly not having known that he was essentially Pakistan's Karla, or George Smiley, depending on your perspective, "Do you think President Musharraf really doesn't control the ISI?"  Several faces went white at the table.  A jaw dropped.  Durrani's eyes narrowed and he slowly said, "It may be in General Musharraf's interests to pretend he has little control over the ISI."  This is pure Durrani -- layers, meaningful, informed, and no one's flack.  

Then I realized looking at bios that he was the former chief of the ISI -- and our accidental bluntness and candor has glued us together since.

Tonight, General Durrani sent me an essay he wrote, with very light editing by me.  These are his words, his insights into how Pakistan sees the Taliban and Afghanistan -- as well as its competition with the US in the region.

I have permission to post the entire essay which I am doing.  I think that those interested in understanding the other side of the complex and stressed US-Pakistan relationship need to read a bit about the history of the ISI in the words of one of their own.

When I last met General Durrani at a conference organized by Al Jazeera in Doha, he said to me:

Steve, it is very hard for me to overstate to you the enthusiasm for which Pakistan's generals have for the Taliban.

Durrani is not a booster for the Taliban; he is a hard core realist -- and his view is that Pakistan's generals prize the Taliban for its ability to give them "strategic depth".  Whether you agree or not, his assessments are very much worth reading in full.

So, the rest from Lt. General and former ISI Chief Assad Durrani:

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The U.S. Helsinki Commission, co-chaired by Representative Chris Smith (R-NJ) and Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD), has been quiet about the bashings of gay people and their family and friends at gay pride marches in eastern Europe and the Baltics, according to the Council for Global Equality.

From CGE's interesting note on the increasing harassment of gays and lesbians in these rights-oriented pride events:

This as in past years, Pride events were a source of controversy, even hostility, in much of the east European region. In Poland and Croatia, anti-gay protesters disrupted parades - and while police generally sought to protect Pride participants, many observers saw the response in Croatia as inadequate to the task. Permits were denied in St. Petersburg. In Moscow, Russian security forces detained Pride marchers, ignoring the right of free assembly that the Russian constitution ostensibly protects.

While the State Department rightly protested Russian actions, the U.S. Helsinki Commission was silent.  A bipartisan Congressional panel, the Commission traditionally has been a fierce advocate of protecting and advancing what we see as fundamental freedoms, including the rights to free speech, peaceable assembly and freedom of expression. However, the Commission took no public stand against the abuses witnessed in this year's Pride season, nor did it publicly commend those governments that properly sought to protect these basic rights.

A quick review of the Commission's work shows that they pretty much look into every dimension of potential human rights abuses other than GLBT harrassment, detention, and other human rights violations.

What's the deal here Senator Cardin?

I love Los Angeles (I know -- few seem to want to admit it), but I love Washington, DC more. 

I love DC's intrigue and policy banter -- the passionate debates about Israel and Palestine, about nuclear vs. renewables, about Grover Norquist vs. big government Republicans (& MoveOn), about whether we should be making a deep dive in rewiring American infrastructure rather than bailing out too-big-to-fail banks.

One of the most memorable DC high sizzle nights I've enjoyed was at Maureen Dowd's home during Obama's inauguration weekend chatting with David Geffen and his partner, Jeremy Lingvall, as well as Rahm Emanuel, economic policy chronicler Michael Hirsh, Larry David, Ron Howard, Helene Cooper, and a slew of others.

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Unbelievable.  The scripting of this high stakes drama between House Speaker John Boehner balancing the White House on one side and the never compromise, never surrender Tea Party on the other keeps getting better and better.

Reports have emerged that House Speaker Boehner told his caucus that their team needs to "provide a positive signal on a plan to avert a U.S. default by tomorrow." 

That's right, by the time markets in Asia open tomorrow.  That's right, Sunday in DC is pretty much Monday in Asia -- and the roller coaster of financial shocks could start if Boehner doesn't get his act together.

Instead of August 2nd being the debt default deadline, Boehner's tactics and now his statement to his own troops have created market expectations that will either be met -- or be disappointed, possibly creating a real sell-off in American treasuries.

Perhaps he should have thought about that before he stormed off.  In John Boehner's verbal duel with Obama yesterday, he said that he had taken the same oath of office as the President and had the same responsibilities as the President.  But the powder keg he is flirting with -- and I believe it is all misguided theater designed to keep the GOP on the evening, morning and mid-day news -- could blow up because his management of his own caucus seems amateurish and weak.

If Boehner was worried at any point about sending "positive market signals", he might have started a lot sooner than this weekend.

Given that I could be wrong about this being well-orchestrated kabuki and that it all really could blow up, Boehner would demonstrate he had some political statecraft if he leaves the fuse with Eric Cantor when the economy goes off the rails.

I love Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish feature, The View From Your Window, which I occasionally copied (with his permission) at The Washington Note.  (click image above for larger version)

But now at Andrew's former home among The Atlantic's "Voices", I am going to post occasional photos that intrigue me as "The Other View".  I'm always interested in the other view -- whether in an argument or from your window.

This shot sent in by reader Lucien Zeigler from a Park Hyatt window in Tokyo.  Love the profile of Mt. Fuji against a pastel sunset, or is that nuclear glow?

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney just released this statement:

Statement from the Press Secretary

The President and Vice President met with Speaker Boehner, Leader Pelosi, Leader Reid and Leader McConnell in the Cabinet Room to discuss options for ensuring that the debt ceiling is raised and the United States does not default on its obligations for the first time in its history.

The President restated his opposition to a short-term extension of the debt ceiling, explaining that a short-term extension could cause our country's credit rating to be downgraded, causing harm to our economy and causing every American to pay higher credit cards rates and more for home and car loans. 

As the current situation makes clear, it would be irresponsible to put our country and economy at risk again in just a few short months with another battle over raising the debt ceiling. Congress should refrain from playing reckless political games with our economy. Instead, it should be responsible and do its job, avoiding default and cutting the deficit. The meeting lasted approximately one hour. 

The leaders agreed to return to Capitol Hill to talk to their members and discuss a way forward, and conversations will continue throughout the day.

The game goes on. 

This debate is keeping us from thinking through the challenges on jobs, on infrastructure, on bringing the Afghanistan War to a constructive close, on the important developments in Egypt, Syria and Libya; on next generation energy needs; on uncertainties in the health care arena; on just about every subject.

The Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin jumped to the conclusion that radical Islamists and/or al Qaeda had a hand in Norway's double tragedy yesterday.  This is not a crime; what was out of line was that she exploited the incident before we knew more to pound legislators for flipping the gravity switch on the Pentagon's budget.

Yesterday's event had one element that made this look like a possible al Qaeda terrorist incident -- complexity.  A bomb in Oslo and a linked shooting and mass slaughter at a youth camp had the appearance of planning, a hallmark of al Qaeda's terrorism.  A friend of James Fallows suggests that some fanatical, right wing groups may be adopting the techniques of al Qaeda.

Many others jumped in the direction that this 'might' be an al Qaeda-linked event, including my colleague Max Fisher -- who nonetheless properly and cautiously wrote in his piece: "So far, the cause of the explosion is unknown, as is the culprit."

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The political marketplace increasingly believes that President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner are closing in on a deal on long-term debt cutting and revenue raising that will avert the catastrophe of telling America's creditors that their faith in America was misplaced.

Many will debate whether there ever really was a chance of default, that the antics of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and the Tea Party Caucus were brilliant kabuki but not serious. 

For the many weeks of pundits agonizing about what really would happen if the US defaulted, if the August 2nd date were real or fake (did it really make a difference if the date was August 3rd or August 4th?), after the deal is done -- if the deal is done -- Americans will soon develop amnesia about most of the details of the episode and move on to the next issue over which the political class and media decide to hyperventilate.

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Now that General David Petraeus has mothballed his uniforms, turned the ISAF command in Afghanistan over to General John Allen, and taken Leon Panetta's chair at the CIA, the next to last big name who fought for primacy in DC's Afghanistan policy wars is, for the most part, off to other pastures.

At the start of the Obama administration, the two arenas that mattered when it came to political power -- the issues defining who was "big" in Obama Land -- were either the global financial crisis or the Afghanistan War.

In the latter case, President Obama conducted the single longest strategic review of US policy and doctrine since the Vietnam War. Those who had grips on some aspect of America's operation in Afghanistan were golden, globally recognized VIPs, got resources, appeared on Rachel Maddow's show, were as close as we get to the old Consuls of Rome. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan (SRAP) Richard Holbrooke, then under some criticism for not spending more time in the AfPak theatre, told me that "someone would be a fool to leave town when all the action on this portfolio was underway in the White House."

The stakeholders who fought hard over which way to go on Afghanistan were akin to the top Strategic Command generals and Soviet experts in presidential administrations during the Cold War.

Who were they and where have they gone?

America's most famous general, David Petraeus, was - as mentioned - one of these policy gladiators recently 'strategically redeployed' to direct the Central Intelligence Agency where his attentions will be global and more broadly strategic than the policy silos he has been running. One of Petraeus' honest but least heard statements made when recommending the number of troops and duration of deployments to Afghanistan was that he was not taking into account the global strategic needs that the US faced elsewhere and that he was focused just on the AfPak challenge - devoid of the larger picture. That narrow clarity is now over for the general and largely neutralizes his definitive hold on America's Afghanistan policy.

But others who had power stakes on Afghanistan and who fought hard inside Washington for their piece of the action were General Jim Jones, national security adviser to President Obama; Defense Secretary Robert Gates; AfPak envoy Richard Holbrooke, General Stanley McChrystal, US Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry. Vice President Joe Biden too was a key force in the debate.

These were the players who skirmished and intrigued against each other building and breaking political alliances as some advocated a Taliban-conquering "all in" approach vs. those who believed America needed to narrow its objectives and not repeat history by doubling down endlessly in a Vietnam-like trap.

General Jones who at one point allied himself with Ambassador Karl Eikenberry to try and get Richard Holbrooke removed - which might have worked had draft letters between the men not leaked out - is no longer National Security Advisor and is now a senior fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center working on energy policy.

Defense Secretary Bob Gates, who was slightly schizophrenic on Afghanistan, has now stepped down, succeeded by Leon Panetta. Gates was remarkably successful at securing the resources and policy parameters on Afghanistan that his lead generals advised but then would give speeches as I once heard him give at the Nixon Center (now the Center for the National Interest) criticizing over-militarizing our approach to the Afghanistan problem. Gates would say that there was no military solution to Afghanistan but of the resources we were committing to solve the problem, 99% was on the military side of the equation he would say -- and would underscore how short-sighted this was.

Richard Holbrooke died too young, his last words to his doctor, "you've got to end this war in Afghanistan." Holbrooke, who of all the key players, had the nightmare realities of Vietnam imprinted on to his DNA and who worked hard to prevent a recurrence of mistakes made in that war, nonetheless partly reflected the reality that the past had become the present.

Just before I was invited to take part in a debate on America's Afghanistan policy in the New York-based Intelligence Squared Debates (where I was on a team debating three others including my colleague and Southeast Asia expert Steve Coll), Holbrooke outlined for me what he saw as the absolute "musts" for US policy and what our constraints would be. From what I knew of the positions of Eikenberry, McChrystal, Petraeus, Jones, Biden and others - it was crystal clear that it would be nearly impossible to get strategic and operational coherence in Washington - no matter what was happening on the ground in Afghanistan. Petraeus had convinced the President and drawn him to his side on larger deployments, and Petraeus - who regularly admitted not being a strategist looking at America's larger strategic picture - called Holbrooke his "wing man." This was a big reversal from the days when the diplomats "led" and the military "did." But Holbrooke, regrettably, is gone.

Stanley McChrystal's position collapsed when Rolling Stone correspondent Michael Hastings captured a culture of commentary in the command staff around McChrystal in Afghanistan that was disdainful of civilian authority, particularly of Vice President Biden. McChrystal was fired for the transgressions - though Obama has buffered the general's fall with a modest advisory post. McChrystal is returning the favor by allegedly telling a number of journalists that "no trust" exists any longer between the Pentagon's generals and those running the National Security Council. But McChrystal is no longer relevant to the AfPak beat.

Ambassador and former ISAF Commander General Karl Eikenberry has just stepped down from his post in Kabul - famous for leaked memos to the White House profiling Hamid Karzai's bipolar behavior and emotional meltdowns and his incredibly bleak reads on the performance of the government and armed forces of Afghanistan. Eikenberry, in a set of farewell interviews recently, takes pride in the "civilian surge" in Afghanistan and feels that he is leaving the war-torn nation better off than when he arrived - but bottom line is that he too is off the Afghanistan beat.

One might argue that there should be others on this list - perhaps Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, our National Security then deputies Tom Donilon or Denis McDonough. Mullen kept his powder dry on many of the AfPak battles . Hillary Clinton didn't seem to play a defining role other than ferociously protecting Holbrooke from his rivals - which was in fact an important assist. Donilon and McDonough intervened on the edges but facilitated the voices involved rather than defining an outcome, with the one famous exception that McDonough told the assembled team during the final phase of the strategic review that a proposal to the President that didn't have a withdrawal trigger date for the surge forces being committed wouldn't be acceptable.

The last one standing is Joe Biden - not because he is the Vice President, but because he has clung behind the scenes to his original position that the US needed to scale down its military and political objectives in Afghanistan while his rivals have fallen by the wayside or have been replaced by others in their roles with lesser stature.

Joe Biden's warnings during the strategic review process that America needed to keep a modest military footprint, focus on al Qaeda, and set up the capacity to "shape the choices made by the Taliban" rather than the Petraeus formulation of "defeating al Qaeda and its affiliates" (i.e. the Taliban)" have ultimately emerged as President Obama's choice - but only after the military failed to translate hundreds of billions of dollars of resources and a large military deployment into success.

No one is fighting hard to be at the table when Afghanistan policy is discussed now. Rather than a path to power and national security celebrity, this portfolio is burdensome and tired.

But this is what Joe Biden is surprisingly good at managing - the portfolios that no one really wants, that may have been front burners in the public eye gone stale.

As an example, Biden drilled down deeply into the who's who of Iraq's byzantine political world, knowing not only the primary leaders of the cultural and ethnic rallying poles in the country - but the rivals of rivals within each of these factions. But perhaps more importantly, Biden also drilled down into the divides inside the US government - reconciling and forcing a bridge between rival State Department and Pentagon views on Iraq. He then built a non-public but important relationship with Ad Melkert, the UN's Special Representative for Iraq, who became a vital partner to Biden in hammering out the myriad back deals that have thus far kept Iraq from falling back into civil war and moving forward something that looks like the beginning of a representative democracy.

Biden has told me he doesn't want the Afghanistan portfolio; that he has enough to do and that there are others who can now implement the general course of action that President Obama has now outlined, committing to a withdrawal of surge forces by the end of 2012 and a withdrawal of all troops by 2014.

But there is no one left to really run the show. No one wants it.

Afghanistan's internal fragility in which a civil war is underway with a proxy war between India and Pakistan stacked on top is exactly the kind of Rubik's Cube challenge that Joe Biden excels at.

Biden's original Afghanistan plan with some modest hybridization and adjustment by President Obama is now the course we are on. Afghanistan spikes in the press now and then - most recently because of blowback from a stressed out American public realizing that the US is spending $120 billion a year in a nation with a $14 billion GDP, but on the whole - there is a long list of other topics that Americans prefer to distract themselves with rather than what is happening in this war.

Biden is the right guy to help Obama to deliver the political outcome in Afghanistan that we need to get to. Biden has thought through strategies to deal with components of the Taliban, understands the vital role Pakistan must play, gets the strategic gaming that is also part of the package and which would no doubt involve India, Saudi Arabia, and perhaps China and Russia.

Biden has won the policy battle. Now it's time for President Obama - after the debt ceiling disaster is hopefully averted - to call Biden for lunch and ask him to shoulder another of the biggest burdens and solve some of the biggest blunders of the Obama administration.

Later today in Washington, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation will release a proposal and report titled "The Startup Act."  It's not legislation but rather a package of proposals designed to facilitate growth of young firms, which interestingly, are responsible for "all" new net jobs created in our economy in recent years.

The website for more info on the Startup Act will hopefully be up later today but is not at the time of this writing.

While I don't believe that the stagnation in the American economy can be quickly overturned by only kickstarting and supporting the work of entrepreneurs, getting innovative, young firms launched -- which have traditionally been the hotbed of innovation in the country -- is better than bailing out mature firms, or doing nothing, which seems to be the state of play in Washington.

Among the proposals that the Robert Litan-crafted Startup Act includes are entrepreneurs' visas, green cards for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) degree diplomas, zero capital gains on five year long investments in startups, licensing freedoms for academic innovators who are inhibited by university-controls on licensing, ten year sunsets on all major regulations and rules, cost-benefit tests for regulations, and more.

Some of these ideas have been kicking around for a bit -- like the Startup Visa Act for Entrepreneurs sponsored by Senators John Kerry (D-MA), Richard Lugar (R-IN), and Mark Udall (D-CO). 

I've always thought that it was self-undermining for the US to maintain incentives for low-skilled immigration and significant barriers to high-skilled immigration, basically telling the world:  "Give us your brawn and not your brains."   Michael Lind and I wrote about this in a New York Times piece a few years ago titled "How to Lose the Brain Race".

There is a lot of merit to what Litan has put together, and the nation would be better served right now debating what is not healthy about its innovation and startup culture at the moment rather than the debt ceiling negotiations.

Also on the jobs and innovation front, McKinsey & Company has recently issued a pretty grim jobs report suggesting that the US economy needs to generate 21 million jobs by 2020 to re-achieve full employment.  But the pathway there is in great dispute.

I'll be chairing a discussion this morning titled "The New Work Era" at the Newseum organized by The Atlantic with knowledge underwriting from McKinsey & Co.  The session can be watched live starting at 10:45 am at The Atlantic LIVE site -- running through til approximately 2:30 pm.

Among those participating are The Honorable Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education, United States Department of Education; Jeff Joerres, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, and President, Manpower Inc.; Frits van Paasschen, Chief Executive Officer and President, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc.; John Sexton, President, New York University; The Honorable Mark Warner, Senator, United States Senate; Lenny Mendonca, Director, Firm Knowledge, McKinsey & Co.; Steve Case, Chairman & CEO, Revolution and Co-Founder, America Online; among others.

We'll see if we can add any ideas to the mix of what the Kauffman Foundation will  constructively offer today on the Startup Act.

Over the last couple of years, I have been increasingly impressed by the work and thinking of Georgetown scholar and now outgoing Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemispheric Affairs Arturo Valenzuela.

I didn't start there.  When Obama Land was picking its team, I had held some private doubts about Valenzuela when I first learned he might land his current job as he then appeared to me as part of the 'preserve the status quo establishment' on US-Latin America relations.  Many Democrats and Republicans in this business are essentially values-crusaders with no sense of the damage that the US-Cuba Embargo has done to American national interests and very little understanding of the costs of US arrogance to relations across the region.  I couldn't have been more wrong. 

Valenzuela is a serious, pragmatic strategist about America's national interests in the region.  He came in to his current position in turbulent currents just as Senator Jim DeMint was squaring off the with the State Department and White House over who DeMint wanted to be the leader of Honduras in what was perceived by many to be a coup against the legitimate President of that country.

Wanting to know more about Valenzuela's thinking I went to see him after he overcame the long "hold" that Senator DeMint had placed on his nomination and got an extraordinary tour de force not only of America's interests in the region but heard a thorough inventory of how leaders in the region saw America's behavior and actions.  He is an active listener -- and spent a great deal of time hearing out the issues bubbling in many frustrated nations to America's south. 

I got a sense of what America's real strategy was in the region -- as opposed to the politically correct optics, which I found vapid and tired, particularly when it came to the stale, badly managed US-Cuba situation.  Valenzuela convinced me that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had drilled down into the realities of Latin America's dynamics and really understood how important it was to get beyond the disfunctional cycles of neglect and hyper-attention that had left a residue of deep mistrust.

Valenzuela confessed to me that US-Latin America policy does not follow the same tracks as, say, US-China policy, or policy towards Iran, or Russia, or NATO-member nations.  Latin America policy -- set by the White House -- no matter how rational and conscientious and planned one wants to be about it, is easily hijacked by events, distractions, or the next perceived bigger item on the policy docket. 

I once quoted Center for Democracy in the Americas President Sarah Stephens who wrote that in one of Barack Obama's major foreign policy essays offered during his first presidential campaign, he committed only 13 words to Latin America.  One of his campaign aides then sent me another speech of Obama's in which he spent 2,115 words on Latin America -- but Valenzuela's point still stands:  Latin America gets surges of interest and then is often neglected.

That is the world that Assistant Secretary of State Valenzuela has operated in.  So, what has he accomplished?

According to numerous sources on the Latin America side of things, Valenzuela pumped life into somewhat moribund channels of communication, both bilaterally and multilaterally in the region.  There is great distrust in Latin America about America's intentions in the region when the US is engaged and anger about America's neglect when disengaged -- and according to sources in the diplomatic arena, Valenzuela balanced that better than nearly any of his predecessors.

Concomitantly, America's favorability ratings in the region have moved substantially higher -- meaning that there is less sense of US meddling, less of an ideological gap that rubs raw the nerves and sensibilities of Latin American citizens. 

Valenzuela also handled the Wikileaks fallout smartly -- convincing most impacted countries to get beyond the episodic moment and to focus on long term strategic bridge-building. Ecuador and Mexico proved to be the standouts -- but even those cases are moving in a better direction now.

US-Brazil relations were going into the tank, and are still rough, but Valenzuela managed a substantial 'reset' of the relationship with President Obama's visit (when the US and allies launched the Libya action).

Given that Valenzuela came into his job with the Honduran political situation erupting, it's impressive that he just helped usher Honduras' return to the OAS, from which it had been expelled.

Close to my own interests, Valenzuela helped move forward some degree of sanity and common sense in restoring cultural, educational, scientific and other dimensions of US-Cuba travel and exchange.

Valenzuela accomplished much during his tenure at the State Department -- and I fear that his leaving will result in some loss of ground for those who want a more dynamic, healthy, and modern American relationship with Latin America -- but am hopeful that his successor will move along a similar course as he laid out.

The truth is, however, that America tends to move backward on Latin America far more consistently than it moves forward.

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Obama Campaign Manager Jim Messina, who can have a tough edge, comes off as nearly warm and fuzzy in this fascinating video expose revealing details -- ranging from money raised to numbers of donors to the architecture of the national effort - of the Obama-Biden campaign.

Messina says that in reconnecting with supporters from the campaign four years ago, Obama's election operatives have already arranged 31,000 face to face meetings and more than 290,000 conversations.  There have been more than 650 grass roots sessions organized with dozens of online meetings.  Obama's operation, called Obama for America -- which is the primary vehicle to push the reelection of Obama and VP Joe Biden -- now has 60 field offices.

The combined operation of Obama for America and the Obama Victory Fund (which shares costs and receipts with the Democratic National Committee) saw 552,462 people making more than 680,000 donations -- of which the average amount was $69.  98% of the donations made were less than $250.

Messina says that at this point in the campaign, this is the largest grass movement support for a campaign in American history.

The total Obama-Biden take this past quarter was $86 million.

$47 million of that came through Obama for America, and $38 million from the DNC-shared Obama Victory Fund. (seems like there is a missing million on the edges in there somewhere)

As PoliticalWire's Taegan Goddard points out this morning, the combined haul of Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Tim Pawlenty, Jon Huntsman and Newt Gingrich was just $33.1 million.

Ouch.

Part of the annual foreign policy ritual in Washington is that the US President, Vice President, and leading Members of Congress make major campaign and fundraising speeches, sign on to resolutions, and pledge unconditional support to Israel, often referring to it as "the only genuine democracy in the Middle East." 

But will it remain so?  The Israel Knesset just passed 47-38 a bill outlawing its citizens from supporting any anti-Israel boycotts.

I have been to Israel and am always impressed by how wide the margins of debate are there -- far wider than inside the DC Beltway where thought control harassment and political intimidation have become art forms when it comes to discussing Middle East dynamics. 

But in Israel, in the Knesset, there has been real debate for decades.  I've spent quality time discussing issues in a completely civil manner with Orthodox rabbis, with members of the Shas Party, with members even of Avigdor Lieberman's party.  I've talked with chairs of the various settlers' associations -- and have worked hard to develop relations across Labor, Kadima and Likud.  Israeli politicians play hardball with each other - and the country, in the end, is better for the level of civil society debate demanded by citizens.

Israel has an impressive rough and tumble democracy, or had.

There is just no doubt that Israel has been King of the Hill in democracy terms and now seems to be kicking down its own democratic hill with the passage of this law.  For the record, I don't support a boycott of Israel just like I don't support anyone burning the American flag. 

But free societies show themselves to be better and more stable than their totalitarian cousins because they allow free debate and governments allow themselves to be challenged by their own people. 

If South Africans, inside South Africa, had not supported the various boycotts of their country during the battle over Apartheid, then Mandela may have remained imprisoned and the despicable ethnic divide might have endured. 

Israel has just hoisted on itself the equivalence of a McCarthy-like witch hunt for those it feels might be traitors to the Greater Israel cause.  These kinds of loyalty oath stunts and such government brittleness undermine democracy and narrow national debate during times when its smarter to keep the gates of ideas as widely open as possible.

Despite today's vote, I don't think that Israel will careen off its more deeply embedded democratic foundation so quickly, but what passed should stand as a huge red flag for Israelis and those of us concerned for its future (and yes, I am).

One of my close mentors, the late and well known Japanese politics expert Hans Baerwald, told me that one really never knows the norms and real truth of a political system until observed under stress.

Real democracies need to cling to their basic code -- not take the shortest, most expeditious, extra-legal route in times of perceived national crisis and undermine the rights of citizens.  That violates basic trust -- and eventually plants the seeds of real rather than imagined rebellion.

Watching on a long flight the other day the classic 1966 Sergio Leone spaghetti Western The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly I couldn't help but think that Afghanistan would make a great backdrop for a remake of the Clint Eastwood classic.

I'm not sure whether Kandahar region 'super governor' Ahmed Wali Karzai would have been cast as "The Bad" or "The Ugly", but the half brother of Afghanistan's President -- shot dead today by a family bodyguard -- was no force of noble spirit. 

The US intelligence establishment has amassed a mountain of material alleging his core involvement in Afghanistan's drug trade and his role not only as a profiteer in the lucrative private security business, but as someone who, like a mafia don, has allegedly had rivals and people of means kidnapped and harassed in an extortion racket.

Karzai's half brother was considered a war lord by many, often referred to as "the most powerful man in Southern Afghanistan."  When then US Representative and now Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Director Jane Harman was pounding the Obama administration and General David Petraeus to show her a plan on how such a morally insolvent and corrupt regime could ever become an adequate partner in stabilizing the country, she was in large degree talking about the intelligence sector-documented nefarious activities of President Karzai's brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai.

The Taliban have publicly claimed responsibility for Karzai's assassination by security guard and trusted Karzai household-insider, Sardar Mohammad.

If true, this shows the Taliban have great reach still throughout the power corridors of Afghan society -- and have enormous patience and skill to manage what would have been a complex and risky operation.  If not true, then one wonders what motivated this guard, and we just don't know those answers yet, if ever.

The other thing to remember though is that to many, Ahmed Wali Karzai was a self-aggrandizing mafia boss; people feared him -- and while many also may fear the Taliban, there is no clear battle between the good and the bad, between those with white hats and those with black.

Maybe for anyone to be the kind of power broker Karzai became, every one eventually becomes "The Ugly."

Eli Lake wrote a thoughtful piece today in the Washington Times following up on the State Department calling Syria Ambassador to the US Imad Moustapha in for consultations given reports that Embassy staff may be video taping Syrian-American protesters in the US in order to intimidate them and use against family members inside Syria.

Some of Lake's and my mutual acquaintances are pillorying some of my comments in the piece.  That's fine -- but here is the full quote that I emailed to Eli Lake when I was on travel in Europe.

Best to put it all out there -- so we can debate what is real rather than what may be taken out of context.

My note to Eli Lake:

Don't have any way of measuring whether his status has fallen -- but common sense says that given what has happened inside Syria, Moustapha is in a complicated and tense situation in Washington.  I last saw Imad Moustapha in his home at a hosted dinner for Amb. Robert Ford.  I would be highly surprised if the Embassy served as a base for intimidation of Syrian-American families but have no sense of this one way or another. 

I think that Moustapha believes in engagement and supports broad economic liberalization.  He is a collector of contemporary art and a blogger -- and I can't imagine that he is not deeply personally stressed by what is happening in his home country -- but just as Ambassadors of the United States need to obey the dictates of policy whether conservative, liberal or neoconservative -- Moustapha must follow the instructions of his home base, or resign. 

One interesting thing to note in Jay Solomon's excellent January 2011 (Wall Street Journal) interview with Bashar al-Assad was that Assad confessed that the size of protests in Tunisia and Egypt meant that the government had failed to get ahead of the peoples' needs and that it was too late for the regimes.  I wish Assad would re-read his own words.

More soon -- catching a flight home to DC from Frankfurt.

Christopher Hitchens just pulled all the sticky veneer off of a cancerous Pakistan-US relationship -- that has been going into the muck not just since we learned that Osama bin Laden was living somewhat pleasantly just down the street from Pakistan's West Point but much before, particularly when A.Q. Khan -- also living luxuriously and as a national hero in a well-buffed world called 'house arrest' -- was out pushing highly sensitive nuclear bomb-making technology to leaders of the world's most thuggish regimes.

Hitchens, not off his game at all, sets the rip at the beginning of his important Vanity Fair piece, "From Abbottabad to Worse":

Here is a society where rape is not a crime. It is a punishment. Women can be sentenced to be raped, by tribal and religious kangaroo courts, if even a rumor of their immodesty brings shame on their menfolk. In such an obscenely distorted context, the counterpart term to shame--which is the noble word "honor"--becomes most commonly associated with the word "killing." Moral courage consists of the willingness to butcher your own daughter.

If the most elemental of human instincts becomes warped in this bizarre manner, other morbid symptoms will disclose themselves as well. Thus, President Asif Ali Zardari cringes daily in front of the forces who openly murdered his wife, Benazir Bhutto, and who then contemptuously ordered the crime scene cleansed with fire hoses, as if to spit even on the pretense of an investigation. A man so lacking in pride--indeed lacking in manliness--will seek desperately to compensate in other ways. Swelling his puny chest even more, he promises to resist the mighty United States, and to defend Pakistan's holy "sovereignty." This puffery and posing might perhaps possess a rag of credibility if he and his fellow middlemen were not avidly ingesting $3 billion worth of American subsidies every year.

I once met and got a tour-de-force of the rough cultural, ethnic, and economic dynamics of the two "statelets" that Hitchens describes within Pakistan from the assassinated Punjab Governor Salman Taseer.  I'm convinced that he knew his rivals would attempt to use his support of intellectual and religious liberalism against him.

We support Pakistan today -- and remain engaged -- because it is the most dangerous nation on the face of the planet today. 

Withdrawing from Pakistan, despite what Hitchens accurately describes as a nearly criminally perverse relationship, would trigger wildly dangerous scenarios -- in part because a substantial portion of the Islamist radical cells that exist in key corners of Pakistan's national security establishment seem to relish a nuclear conflagration with India and are as ideologically committed to global destabilization schemes as Osama bin Laden was.

But America needs to invent leverage in this relationship rather than become more trapped in the muck of it.  Today, Pakistan is engaged in high stakes extortion -- demanding funds and support or its already bad behavior could get much worse.  That's how North Korea survives.

Barack Obama is beginning a long process of beginning to pull troops out of Afghanistan -- but as long as the US maintains a large military footprint there, we have less leverage than otherwise with Pakistan, which controls many vital choke-points that the US depends on in waging war in Afghanistan.  A key to diminishing Pakistan's leverage over the US and changing the equation in the relationship is to 'shrink' the US presence in Afghanistan and minimize dependence on Pakistan.

Some inside Pakistan did applaud the killing of Osama bin Laden; some even helped behind the scenes provide intelligence that eventually led to the storming of his compound.  But the people that mattered, who are in the news, who are running the national security, diplomatic and intelligence ministries and agencies did not come out and say "We would have killed bin Laden had we found him."

They are not saying that -- and are instead condemning the US for its covert Seal Team Six operation -- because they are fearful of their own angry, armed religious radicals.  To secure legitimacy in Pakistan right now, one must be allied with the Taliban in Afghanistan and overtly anti-American, at least in public. 

Unfortunately, the raw truth is that America has no real choice but to remain engaged with Pakistan -- but this can't be a binary arrangement in which Pakistan extorts and the US turns a blind eye to Pakistan's role empowering rogue regimes and animating some of the world's worst transnational terrorists. 

Slow disengagement, a decrease in financial support (as the US has just done) -- though not a full suspension -- some arm-twisting of its patrons like China and Saudi Arabia and some strategic clarity in the Obama administration on what the real prize here is -- which is a less psychotic Pakistan -- rather than plodding along in the debilitating Afghanistan quagmire could move things, eventually, to a less dangerous course.

When the Republican leadership orchestrated the Eric Cantor June 23rd walkout of the debt ceiling talks, led by Joe Biden, the strategy was to up the ante by forcing President Obama to engage them. 

(official White House photo; credit: Pete Souza)

Obama offered a grand deal -- huge cuts across the board, including substantial rollbacks of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits -- but including the suspension of economically distorting tax benefits for the rich and highly profitable firms, particularly ethanol and oil, that were gorging themselves on public dollars.

David Brooks was right in stating the obvious in his provocative essay "The Mother of All No-Brainers" -- that the Republicans had won but are so paralyzed by Tea Party ideologues that they can't close the deal.  Republicans have set the terms of debate, forced the Democrats to promise a sacrifice of holy commitments to their base, and would have been able to steal back the mantle of "fiscal conservatism" after Bill Clinton became the balanced budget guy and George W. Bush blew the hole out of the economy's bottom.

Now, John Boehner is showing that he is trapped in an ideological bind with his own constituents and that Obama is too overwhelming for him.  The big deal won't work, Boehner says, because Boehner can't get his caucus to do the deal of the era because it involves minor revenue increases.  They'd rather default on the national debt and undermine global trust in the United States as a political stunt.

Boehner has now rejected the course of negotiations with the President and wants Biden back and the smaller scale, more pragmatic plan that Joe Biden had been working on with leaders of both parties before Eric Cantor decided to capsize the effort.

Boehner said in a statement:  "I believe the best approach may be to focus on producing a smaller measure, based on the cuts identified in the Biden-led negotiations, that still meets our call for spending reforms and cuts greater than the amount of any debt limit increase."

The Obama-Biden team is working well in these negotiations.  It's clear that they forfeited a lot of ground to the GOP in these talks -- and Obama may in fact be pulling off what Bill Clinton did with welfare reform and repositioning the Dems to forfeit much of their Great Society architecture as a way to institutionalize more access to centrist and independent voters who are skeptical of the LBJ-forged nanny state mandates.

But Obama-Biden also seem to know that the GOP is testing them as they move up and down the ladder, and now that Boehner is pining for Biden again, it shows how indispensable Joe Biden has turned out to be as a partner to Obama.

Biden also has revenue increases in his more workable, less grandiose plan.  He's not soft on the GOP -- just pragmatic.  And now the Republicans are essentially going mostly the direction with Joe Biden where Obama wanted them to go in the first place.

Just about every week I get an invite from a DC-based foreign diplomatic mission to attend a "national day." 

I love these gatherings and am somewhat heartened to see Members of Congress and Senators out on the circuit not just lining up future consulting contracts but sending the signal that the global community matters, that having a passport is something of which to be proud, and that a key part of American leadership is listening to what the rest of the world is saying.

I look forward to getting an invitation from the future Republic of South Sudan Ambassador to the US to join him or her on South Sudan's "national day" - which will be July 9th, or today - when this new state came on to the international stage.

This morning, US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice helped punctuate South Sudan's birth with an impressive statement of support.  Former Secretary of State Colin Powell - who signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement on behalf of the US - is with her at the new statehood ceremonies along with Congressman Donald Payne and Ambassador Princeton Lyman, who doggedly worked this Sudanese civil war towards a partly constructive track.

Rice committed America to standing with South Sudan as it works through a mountain of challenges that will test the solvency of its creation - but importantly, she left "responsibility" with the South Sudanese.  That's exactly right. 

America has to get out of the business of being on the line for how another nation behaves and operates - responsibility for results lie with leaders and governments and institutions they create with the support of citizens.

Rice also went beyond the thin, usually vapid characterization of 'democracy' as the act of voting, which Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass has correctly dismissed as just "ballotocracy."

Rice stated today:

All of this will demand leadership and accountability. For democracy and development rest on the foundation of good governance. Peace and prosperity rest on the foundation of strong institutions devoted to the public interest. Law and justice rest on the foundation of a political system free of corruption and fraud. And education and public health rest on the foundation of a government dedicated to the well-being of all rather than the interests of a few

. . .Over the course of a week in January, millions of men and women lined up peacefully and joyfully to cast their ballots, from dusty village lanes to the main streets of Juba. You reminded us again of two mighty truths: few forces on Earth are more powerful than a citizenry tempered by struggle and united in sacrifice. And every problem created by human folly can be met by human wisdom and mended by human resolve.

It is important for diplomats like Susan Rice and Colin Powell to remind Americans and others around the world that institutions define democracy, not just the vote - and these institutions require a lot of investment and time to evolve. 

The US is paralyzed politically on sensible global financial aid that birthing a new country will require - but there is a lot of capacity building and governance best practices that can be shared.  But that costs money too.

As Rice indicates in her speech, the success of South Sudan is not guaranteed; there will be lots of tests - but at least so far, the diplomats - rather than the military - have scored a big win in one of the world's rawest spots.

The US Congress needs to step back and reconsider its frequent, irresponsible disdain for diplomacy, international institutions, and yes - even global aid dollars. 

Bono, whose work I admire, shared in a private reception before his Baltimore U2 concert two weeks ago, that American aid to the world is small -- but nonetheless leverages phenomenally important complementary resources, partnerships and enduring connections.
 
I don't believe in aid for aid's sake - and I believe in national interest-driven action plans that achieve results.  But I think that what has been hatched in South Sudan is in our collective global and national interests - and that it's important to note when diplomats, who are so often accused of dithering, actually accomplish something 'big.'

At least for the moment -- this day of July 9th -- launching South Sudan is big.