When Georgy Met Donny: A Satirical Tête-à-Tête Between 43 and 45

43: Just wanted to call and say thanks, dude!

45: Oh brother! (45 lets out a big sigh)… Thanks for what, George?

43: Dude, you are makin’ me look like a genius.

45: Really? Everyone thought you were a buffoon and the media might hate me, but the people think I’m the smartest president ever!

43: Dude, dude, duuude… (43 pauses for effect)… get your head outta your dumb ass! You… (45 cuts him off)

45: Excuse me, excuse me, George!  First of all… I’d never do that to my hair… also, I’m, like I said, a smart person.

43: Donald, get a grip?  You’re being a major a*@hole – big time, like my Veep Dick would say… (45 cuts him off)

45: Why, George, why?

43: The Muslim ban – even I thought you were showboating during the primaries!  But seriously, you put Iraq on the list?  Do you even know that our soldiers are still in Iraq? That we are about to retake Mosul?

45: George, don’t get me started on Iraq – WMD… gimme a break!  You took us into Iraq, which I warned about back then many, many times… it’s on tape, check it out?  Anyway, you started a war in Iraq because you wanted to one up your Dad… and in doing so, you f$%&*d up the entire Middle East!

43: Listen dude, I made a big mistake listening to Dick’s cabal and their BS… (43 pauses to let 45 take it in)… but then why are you messin’ with Iran… and what’s “puttin’ Iran on notice” mean anyway?  Is that like Obama’s redline, he-he… (45 cuts him off)

45: Very funny, George!  You’re the guy who put Iran on an “axis of evil” – and let them just remain there… now Obama has given them a sweetheart deal like you did with North Korea, the other member of your axis!  Coddling doesn’t work, George!

43: But you keep telling the world I made a big mistake in Iraq and you want to repeat that in Iran?

45:  I’m not going to war with Iran, OK?  But nothing is off the table… can we change the subject?

43: To what… Australia?  He-he… (45 cuts him off)

45: Not funny, George, do you want me to hang up on you like I did with that Aussie?

43: Dude, just chill, would ya?  Listen to your Veep – that Pence fella, he is a good egg!  He’s done such a great job in Indiana… it’s become just like it was in the good old days… (45 cuts him off)

45: George, I got this.  The American people voted for me in record-breaking numbers because they wanted a winner.  They got a winner, there is going to be so much winning, they’re gonna get tired of winning… (43 cuts him off)

43: Look dude, you didn’t win the popular vote – Hillary did! In fact, you even got less overall votes than Mitt!  So you’re a loser there, Donny boy, he-he!

45:  George, you know I could have won the popular vote but for a massive fraud of 3 to 5 million votes in Hillary’s states?

43: Yeah, sure… I lost the popular vote by only ½ million and even I didn’t make such a horseshit claim, Donny!

45: Whatever, George… that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.  Look, I built the most successful business enterprise on the planet and I am gonna do the same for America.  I am going to make America… (43 cuts him off)

43: Save it, dude!  That’s a great slogan but looking at the first two weeks, I’d say you’ve just made America a bit worse! 

45: Whoa! Look who’s talking – remember that “big time” turd you left behind and had Obama clean up?  Now Barack cleaned up your mess all right, but he’s a liberal p@#$y and all he wanted was more government, more regulations, and healthcare for all… that’s no way to grow the economy!  You should know that, George?

43: So dude, you think by imposing tariffs on Mexican goods, mis hermanos mexicanos, you are going to grow the economy?

45: WTF George… (45 lets out loud groan) I don’t understand Mexican, OK?

43: He-he… Look dude, the Wall is a terrible idea and Mexico will never pay for it! 

45: We’ll see about that George?  It’s all because of that lousy NAFTA deal your Dad negotiated way back when… (43 cuts him off)

43: Look dude; keep my Pappy outta this, OK?  How about your badly executed Muslim ban… (45 cuts him off)

45: George, stop calling it that… I am not banning Muslims!

43: Hey, smarty-pants, you’ll learn soon enough that inside the beltway, perception is all that matters.  Perception is reality in Washington D.C.!  If the mainstream media is calling it a ban, it is a ban. Period.  He-he! (long pause) Anywho, Hannity and Fox cannot change that – wake up, smell the fresh hummus waftin’ from the food trucks on Pennsylvania Avenue, and lift the ban.

45: George, it’s not gonna happen… but tell me, not that I care… (45 pauses briefly) what do you think of Neil Gorsuch?

43: Hey, I put Neil on the Appeals Court; he’s a good guy!  But the Dems are pissed because of Mitch’s shabby treatment of Merrick.  You gotta throw ’em a bone, Donny… talk to ’em like I used to.  Chuck and you go a long way; give him a call…

45: Chucky is a monster and a fake!  He can, as Dick said, “Go f%*& himself!”  

43: Big mistake, dude… but like I said you’re makin’ me look good, so whatever. Ciao!

45: Hey, George… let me tell you something – you can never look good, so I’ve got nothing to worry about… (43 hangs up, but 45 continues)  Do me a favor and tell low-energy Jeb, “I did insult my way to the presidency! So there, Loser!  And, I’m going to insult my way, all the freakin’ way, through it as well!”

(45 slams the phone into its cradle for dramatic effect and his staff bursts into applause.)

Moscow on the Potomac

Background:

When I first submitted my op-ed, “Moscow on the Potomac,” on December 20, 2016 to The Washington Post, I had no idea that the Trump-Russian connection was about to explode into the headlines with the CNN/BuzzFeed exposé?  Three weeks ago, I believed I had put together a rather cogent analysis on the possible repercussions of what seemed to be a rather strange, yet cozy, Trump-Putin relationship.  In fact, I went on to submit my op-ed to several other publications without much success.  Now, given some of the shocking political developments this week, I would first like to present my original take on what I thought was a disconcerting situation even back then before Christmas.  Following my op-ed, I have listed in a postscript all of the startling events that unfolded this week and have been reported in various national media.

Moscow on the Potomac:

In December 2016, we marked the 25^th anniversary of the Western world’s victory over the Soviet Union in a metaphorical “Cold War” that spanned much of the second-half of the 20^th century.  But this seminal victory might turn out to be pyrrhic, if President-elect Trump refuses to recognize that Russia, which emerged from the ruins of the Soviet Union, is no longer akin to a friendly western ally that its then President Boris Yeltsin wanted it to become?

U.S. intelligence agencies, including the FBI and the CIA, have concluded based upon a preponderance of evidence that the Russians clearly interfered in this year’s U.S. presidential elections, which are a quintessential part of our democracy.  In fact, the DNI’s “intel” consensus was that Russian President Putin directly approved of cyber efforts to help “Comrade Trump” win the White House.  With Trump in the White House, Putin believes that his dream of returning Russia to the heyday of the Soviet Union will be given a new impetus. 

In fact, and more ominously, with Trump’s appointment of “Comrade Tillerson” as U.S. Secretary of State, Putin must sense that the resurrection, of what then President Reagan so derisively called the “evil empire,” will gain momentum.  In all likelihood, Putin will be allowed to keep Crimea and Secretary Tillerson might even choose to turn a blind eye to Eastern Ukraine.  Putin would then be free to re-deploy his 2008 Georgian annexation (Abkhazia and South Ossetia) “you don’t ask, we don’t tell” model in Eastern Ukraine without any further badgering by the West?  Thus, the resurrection of a new “evil empire” will have begun – with Putin’s “near abroad” strategy firmly taking hold in the first year of the Trump presidency. 

It won’t be too long before Putin’s tentacles start spreading to the Baltics and Eastern Europe, especially if Trump restructures NATO to deemphasize its post-Cold War members.  Mother Russia with her enormous natural gas and oil reserves remains Putin’s “trump” card.  With rising energy prices, Putin could then resume playing this trump card to pressurize Western Europe into lifting sanctions against Russia.  If “Comrade Tillerson” sides with Putin on this critical issue, which can be quickly determined by the Trump administration’s policy on Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, the sanctions regime would immediately collapse.  Putin’s “near abroad” strategy will then enter a more penetrative “further abroad” phase.  

In choosing to bring Russia closer to the United States, Trump is simultaneously seeking to distance us from China.  It appears to be a foreign policy strategy based on economic power, in which Trump views China’s economic strength as a threat, but does not see Russia’s military strength in the same vein.  More distressingly, Trump seems completely unfazed by the cyber threat Russia poses against the West.  Many American pundits believe that Trump will change his tune after taking office and when the linkage between his presidential victory and the role played by Russian cyber espionage begins to fade in the American public’s memory. 

But the political opposition, anti-communist patriots, and the news media are not likely to let go and there will be ongoing questions about whether we have a “Moscow on the Potomac” situation at home?  However, unlike in the 1984 movie, “Moscow on the Hudson” – in which a Russian Robin Williams is trying to defect in a New York Bloomingdale’s department store – this won’t be a laughing matter!  In our current real life situation, Democrats and Reagan conservatives alike will wonder whether we have an American president in the Oval Office kowtowing to the Kremlin?  Trump might not want his presidential victory to be tainted by claims of Russian interference, but he simply cannot place the integrity of our intelligence agencies below that of Putin’s cyber thugs.  After all, these selfsame agencies will be critical to the success of his presidency – they might have flubbed on weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, but they also helped President Obama nail Osama bin Laden!

Sadly, to use a Trumpian term, ignoring Russia’s cyber threat in this highly and hyper connected world could cause the West to lose the Cyber War – a more sophisticated 21^st century version than its metaphorical 20^th century cousin, the Cold War, which took us almost five decades to win.  The Cyber War’s devastating impact could cripple western economies, which are so dependent on the Internet, without any physical WMD being actually deployed?  So it is imperative for President Trump to understand that the Cyber War is a war that no president can afford to lose.  He must begin by acknowledging the problem – Putin has his cyber sights set on the West and the interference into our 2016 elections was only a sampler battle; the bigger war is yet to come!

***

Post Script:

1.     CNN online report, datelined January 10, 2017, with the headline, “Intel chiefs presented Trump with claims of Russian efforts to compromise him”:

 

“A salacious 35-page document, a summary of which was presented to President Barack Obama and President-elect Trump last week, included allegations that Russian operatives claim to possess “compromising personal and financial information” on Trump, CNN first reported, citing multiple U.S. officials.”

2.     Senator Marco Rubio asked Rex Tillerson, Trump’s Secretary of State nominee, at his January 11, 2017 confirmation hearing: “Is Vladimir Putin a war criminal?”

Mr. Tillerson replied: “I would not use that term.”

3.     David Ignatius revealed the following in his January 12, 2017 Washington Post op-ed online, “Why did Obama dawdle on Russia’s hacking?”:

“According to a senior U.S. government official, Flynn phoned Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak several times on Dec. 29, the day the Obama administration announced the expulsion of 35 Russian officials as well as other measures in retaliation for the hacking.”

4.     Matthew Miller in his January 13, 2017 Time magazine report online, “James Comey Cannot Be Trusted With a Trump-Russia Investigation”:

“It was always going to be difficult for FBI Director Jim Comey to oversee an investigation into ties between President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign and the Russian government. Thursday’s announcement that the Department of Justice’s Inspector General will investigate Comey’s conduct during last year’s presidential election makes it impossible.”

5.     On late Friday evening January 13, 2017, NBC News reported:

“The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said it will conduct a bipartisan inquiry into possible Russian intelligence agencies' involvement in the U.S. election, and the probe's scope includes interviewing officials in the Obama and Trump administrations.”

Moscow might have tried to soft land on the Potomac, but unfortunately it has been caught making a big splash – the consequences of which are yet to be fully determined!

Assuring Victory in Afghanistan

The failed Mayday bombing incident in Times Square exposed the involvement of the Pakistan Taliban in a jihadist plot against the United States. Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized American citizen, was apparently distraught over collateral damage caused by Predator drones along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Increasingly in the past year, disgruntled Pakistani-Americans have made various attempts to avenge for stepped-up drone attacks in the critical AfPak border area. This latest effort – another foiled attack on the homeland – brings a new sense of urgency to our overall mission in the Afghan theater of operations.

A recent New York Times editorial lamented that

“Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, has a clear military strategy. We are less certain about the administration’s political strategy.”

It should be pretty obvious to anyone that if these two strategies are not in sync, failure is no longer an option, but becomes almost certain. We were experiencing a similar situation in Iraq until late 2006, when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was fired and the current Defense Secretary Robert Gates took charge. Secretary Gates quickly aligned the Bush Administration’s political strategy namely, to defeat the insurgency and stabilize Iraq, with its military strategy, which was to surge forces with a clear, hold and build objective – and, thus ensured success. Today, the U.S. is on target to withdraw most of its combat troops from Iraq by late summer.

More curiously, the Times editorial appeared to have analyzed the Karzai problem strictly within the confines of Afghanistan, ignoring its larger geopolitical context. Pakistan’s influence on the outcome in Afghanistan is as much, if not more relevant than, what Iran’s influence would have been to the outcome in Iraq without the surge. President Karzai’s weakness is, in part, due to the Pakistani military’s ongoing covert relationship with the Afghan Taliban.

The Obama administration’s political strategy in Afghanistan is thus compounded by the “what do we do about Pakistan” factor? Gen. McChrystal will not be able to effectively clear, hold and build in Afghanistan until President Obama delivers an enforceable ultimatum to the Pakistan military’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency. President Obama should warn the ISI in no uncertain terms to cease and desist from further meddling in Afghanistan – a good start would be to give the Pakistan military a deadline to begin its much-delayed operations in North Waziristan to flush out all of the Al Qaeda and Taliban leadership. Only then, can President Obama seriously expect to achieve his own goal of starting to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan by mid-2011.

Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist, wrote recently in the Washington Post about the selfsame Pakistan factor. Mr. Rashid’s analysis of the dilemma facing the United States boiled down to “Karzai vs. the ISI.” Even he acknowledged that Pakistan is trying to influence the outcome in Afghanistan to its advantage. The ISI is again hedging dangerously with respect to the Taliban – turning against them at home to satisfy the U.S., but coddling them in Afghanistan to counter the Indians.

The bottom line is just as the “Sunni Awakening” preceded the Iraqi surge, the U.S. needs to feverishly work with Karzai on a “Taliban Awakening” in Afghanistan to guarantee the success of the surge there. The United States cannot let the ISI dictate the terms of its Afghan policy; else it is bound to fail. Pakistan must focus its energies internally to rid itself of a compounding “Jihadi” menace; else it will continue to degenerate into chaos akin to a Somalia of the subcontinent – a situation that would not be beneficial to the world at large. Pakistan must accept the role of the Predator drone in today’s war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban leadership as it did the role of the Stinger missile launcher in yesteryear’s war against the Soviets – as a necessary instrument to drive out foreign fighters from Afghanistan. Only then can Afghanistan achieve a lasting peace with a stable government.

Eight in ’08 – Crude Summer, Black Fall!

I have been unable to post a new blog in the past couple of months due to various commitments. Nonetheless, I discovered eight wonderful commentaries that I had written back in 2008 and posted on the “Syndicated News” web site. They were penned during a sizzling summer, shortly after the price of crude oil hit a record high of $147.27 in July 2008 and during a black fall, when in a single week the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted 1,874 points, or 18%, in its worst weekly decline ever on both a point and percentage basis.

Some of these essays on our fragile political, economic and foreign policy landscape at that time, now seem quite prescient, if I might say so myself. I wish mainstream pundits would review their writings from a couple of years ago to see if they had the requisite foresight on some of the pressing issues of the day. As the saying goes, hindsight is 20/20, but it’s foresight that really qualifies you as a pundit. So here are the links to my syndicated efforts from that turbulent period in 2008:

In the War on Terrorism: A Passage Through India (8/14/2008)

Can a new, expanded NATO avert Cold War II? (8/21/2008)

Obama-Biden his time, as McCain-Palin to irrelevance! (9/3/2008)

Victory in Iraq (9/8/2008)

The Great Regression (9/30/2008)

For U.S. Foreign Policy: A "New Clear" Passage Through India (10/20/2008)

The Political Pendulum: Swinging To Liberalism (10/27/2008)

Too Much, Too Little, Too Late From The Fed: We Are All Keynesians Now! (10/30/2008)

So do I qualify as a pundit?

New START be damned, it’s the beginning of the END… an END to Armageddon!

In its March 27th editorial, “A worthy U.S.-Russia arms control treaty,” the Washington Post calls the new arms control agreement “a solid diplomatic achievement” for President Obama. While it is great to hear that the U.S. and Russia have agreed to slash their nuclear arsenals to the lowest levels in half a century, the reality is that the original START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) was signed in 1991 towards the end of the Cold War!

Five years earlier, President Reagan had remarked privately to his Secretary of State, George Schultz, “Why wait until the end of the century for a world free of nuclear weapons?” Ten years into the new millennium and we are nowhere close to what President Obama more recently called as “a world without nuclear weapons." Nonetheless, the current accord is being dubbed a “New START” and the White House emphasized that this new treaty does not in any way restrict U.S. missile defense plans.

Meanwhile Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, at a White House Press Briefing on March 26th, made it clear that

“I don’t think anybody expects us to come anywhere close to zero nuclear weapons anytime soon.”

So I have a symbolic gesture that could go a long way to show the world that we are indeed serious about a nuclear weapons-free world. Given that over the past two decades, we have had a successful START I, followed by an un-ratified START II, and now another New START – I would imagine we should be way beyond the starting gate at this point. I therefore humbly suggest to President Obama that the new treaty be called END as in Eliminating the Nuclear Deterrent.

Symbolism plays a big role in the politics of the Middle East and Asia, where we face the biggest threat of nuclear proliferation. In fact, the Post concludes its March 27th editorial by lamenting that “it’s hard to see how new treaties will bring about the disarmament of North Korea or stop Tehran’s centrifuges.” If the U.S. and Russia were to sign an END Treaty, as opposed to a New START Treaty, we might just signal to the world that the end game is actually in sight. Also, in the age of the Internet and social media that demands remarkable content with catchy headlines, an “END to Armageddon” makes for one memorable tweet! But seriously, the END treaty will likely gain more popular acceptance because as the old adage goes “well begun is half done.” So, Mr. President, please let’s make it the END.

Mossad on the Move

There has been much brouhaha in the media of late about an Israel vs. United States sparring contest. Following Vice President Biden’s recent contentious visit to Israel, Thomas L. Friedman of the New York Times went apoplectic in his March 14th column, “Driving Drunk in Jerusalem.” He accused Israel of making it “look like America’s most dependent ally can push” us around. Then Robert Kagan got into the act with a contrarian viewpoint that not only empathized with Israel but also was more scathing in his judgment of President Obama’s overall foreign policy. In his March 17th column in the Washington Post, “Allies everywhere feeling snubbed by President Obama,” Mr. Kagan suggested that “Israelis shouldn't feel that they have been singled out.”

On the same day, John Bolton, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, spouted his usual hawkish tone in the Wall Street Journal. In “Israel and The Crisis With Obama,” Mr. Bolton pointed out that “Israel has sought to accommodate Mr. Obama on two critical issues: negotiations with Palestinians and Iranian nuclear weapons.” After glossing over the distraction of the Israeli settlements, Mr. Bolton reiterated his long-held position that “Americans must realize that allowing Iran to obtain nuclear weapons is empowering an existential threat to the Israeli state, to Arab governments in the region that are friendly to the U.S., and to long-term global peace and security.”

I suspect that a lot of Americans already recognize that a nuclear-armed Iran is a serious threat to world peace given some of the vile pronouncements of its holocaust-denying leaders. So let me expand on a conspiracy theory that I believe is playing out right now in the Middle East. First, it is almost impossible to believe that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu was blindsided by his own Interior ministry during Vice President Biden’s recent visit. Second, the Israelis are too smart to expect anyone to believe as much. Thus, per their master plan, Israel’s Mossad began by intentionally blindsiding the British government with their infamous Dubai operation in January – assassinating a prominent Hamas leader using British identities – and is now making it appear like they can push the United States around as well.

This “modern-day David taking on two western Goliaths back-to-back" is a staged precursor to an imminent Israeli action aimed at taking out relevant Iranian nuclear facilities – without giving Iran any reason to suspect any involvement of the traditional Anglo-American alliance. If the Israeli airstrikes are successful, they will simultaneously achieve both of Mr. Bolton’s stated objectives and additionally contribute to a more favorable outcome in Iraq. It seems to me that Mossad is on the move – setting the stage for what Mr. Bolton has been propagating for a long time, which is “a pre-emptive strike against Iran's nuclear program.” Israel recognizes that such action is the only way to achieve a lasting Middle East peace because it will:

1. Neutralize the Iranian threat and its ascendancy much to the satisfaction of the Arab nations and leadership in the Middle East.
2. Force the Palestinian leadership to jettison “proximity talks” in favor of “direct talks” with them towards a permanent peace settlement.
3. Ensure that Iran will no longer influence the formation of a pro-Iranian government in Iraq following recently concluded parliamentary elections there.

Americans can only hope that Israel gets it right this time just as it did with its pre-emptive strike on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear facility back in 1981. Two decades later, we were unable to find WMD in Iraq in large part due to that prescient action. If the United Nations cannot convince Iran to abandon its pursuit of WMD, maybe the mighty arm of the Mossad will?

Axis of Faith

Mahatma Gandhi’s strategy of non-violence might have humbled the British empire of yesteryear, but such subtlety and discretion have little to no effect in this age of terrorism. India’s lack of a military response to the “26/11” Mumbai attacks might have gained it credibility in the western world but have made it appear weak and ineffective in its own backyard. China’s recent verbal saber-rattling over its long-standing border dispute with India is a case in point.

The world discerns between India’s post-26/11 fatalism and America’s post-9/11 realism. However, if India wants to be seriously considered as a major economic and military power in the 21st century, it needs to revamp its 20th century “non-aligned” foreign policy just like it overhauled its antiquated socialist economic model in 1991. India’s economic gains since then are clearly visible to the world; however, its inability to simultaneously defend itself against modern-day terrorism and communist China’s expansionist designs has the potential to mire it in an eternal crisis that can only suppress its growth as a 21st century power.

As far the United States is concerned, there are two significant reasons that it needs to revisit its Cold War foreign policy paradigm:

1. Thirty-odd years of economic engagement with China has not resulted in a concomitant shift in China’s totalitarian political structure – the U.S. should have embarked on a mid-course correction in its China policy shortly after the end of the Cold War in 1991. China’s unchecked power and blatant ambition could result in a New Cold War situation with the western world in the next couple of decades.
2. After the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, the U.S. not only abandoned Pakistan, but further slapped it with the Pressler Amendment sanctions – which banned most economic and military assistance to Pakistan unless the President certified annually that Pakistan did not possess nuclear weapons. Any attempt to mollify Pakistan after two decades of neglect will eventually prove to be a waste of time and energy – the Pakistani people no longer trust the U.S. and never will.

Notwithstanding Pakistan’s current offensive against its own homegrown Taliban, it remains a fragile democracy that can be usurped at any time by its powerful military. As soon as President Obama starts winding down military operations in Afghanistan next year, we will see an attendant increase in Pakistan’s meddlesome activities along its eastern border with India. Based on China’s ongoing problems with the United States and India, Pakistan must already be hedging its bets – by renewing old ties with and seeking longer term refuge under Beijing’s expanding Asia-Pacific umbrella.

Thus, in this rapidly evolving new power structure, it only makes sense that the U.S. seek stronger ties with like-minded nations in the Asia-Pacific region – that go beyond its traditional Cold War allies such as Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea. It is imperative for the United States and India to become more closely aligned from a political, economic, technological and military standpoint. Keeping the world’s oldest and largest democracies together – in a new long term “axis of faith” partnership – should become the foundation of 21st century U.S. foreign policy.

Pallin Around With Palin

It was a month ago on 9/11 that I posted my imaginary interview (see “The Real McCoy”) with Senator McCain. Since then, his running mate, Governor Palin flubbed a few sit-downs with ABC’s Charlie Gibson and CBS’ Katie Couric. Consequently, the McCain campaign decided that Palin was off limits to the mainstream media until after the election. However, the American public was given to understand that Governor Palin would still meet with conservative and small town wannabe journalists. Unfortunately, I am not your average Joe Sixpack pundit that the Governor would be comfortable with. In fact, I am that potent combination of a liberal with an Ivy League graduate degree – so I am pretty sure that she won’t talk to me. Alas, as I did with Senator McCain, I need to fake my interview with the lovely Ms. Palin. So here goes…

Jack: It’s a pleasure to meet you in person…

Sarah Palin: Can we get started? I have half-a-dozen of you wannabes lined up this morning, and you are only my first.

Jack: OK! Back in June you told Larry Kudlow of CNBC that you were not sure “what is it exactly that the VP does every day?” Now that you have been a VP candidate for over six weeks, do you know any better?

Sarah Palin: Well, if I am so blessed, and Senator McCain is so blessed… I expect that he has a role in mind, which will fulfill the maverick image that he and I have earned as two mavericks. We will reform Washington as two outsiders on a mission to…

Jack: But, Sarah. Excuse me; can I call you, Sarah? You see I have this joke, I mean, this question lined up later on that requires me to call you Sarah. So is that OK, Sarah?

Sarah Palin: Whatever, Jack? Your interview is not going to make it into the mainstream media, anyway, so you can call me whatever your puny readership desires…

Jack: Thanks, Sarah! But you just called Senator McCain an outsider when he has been a beltway insider for, like 26 years… what’s up with that?

Sarah Palin: Jack, Jack, Jack… Senator McCain has always been an outsider to members of his own party. In fact, he was going to pick that matzo ball, Lieberman, as his VP. Oops, silly me, cross that matzo ball thingy as off the record. Never mind, no one is going to read you, anyway… so, you see McCain has always been on the inside looking out!

Jack: But that still makes him an insider, so how is he going to reform anything?

Sarah Palin: Because he is going to bring all these outsiders and mavericks into Washington and reform the place. The man’s a maverick just like me…

Jack: OK, moving on… at a recent campaign rally, you said of Joe Biden, “I've been hearing about his Senate speeches since I was in, like, the second grade.” Sarah, Joe Biden entered the Senate in January 1973, when you were almost nine years old. At nine, most kids are in fourth grade, so did you like repeat…

Sarah Palin: Jack, I was joking… but seriously, what have you heard?

Jack: That you went to six different colleges before you graduated from your “own private Idaho?”

Sarah Palin: Ha! Ha! Very funny, Jack! What else you got?

Jack: Have?

Sarah Palin: What?

Jack: What else do you have?

Sarah Palin: Whatever…

Jack: Your older sister, Heather Bruce, told Glamour magazine recently that “What’s happening to Sarah Palin right now is like the worst college exam cram period ever.” Do you believe this is a fair way – essentially pulling a few all-nighters – to land a heartbeat away from the presidency?

Sarah Palin: Hey if Dubya got by for eight years, so can I. Besides, it can only get better, right? (At this point in my interview, Sarah concludes her answer by winking her left eye at me).

Jack: Are you trying to seduce me, Ms. Robinson?

Sarah Palin: Say what?

Jack: You just winked at me, so I remembered that famous line from “The Graduate?”

Sarah Palin: That movie was, like, so before my time…

Jack: Never mind. Let’s move on. In a recent campaign appearance you said that Senator Obama is “palling around with terrorists.” Don’t you think that was beyond the pale?

Sarah Palin: In what respect, Charlie?

Jack: I’m Jack…

Sarah Palin: Sorry, I had a flashback to Charlie Gibson for a moment there … Hmm… beyond the pale… Jack, are you making fun of my last name? Todd is standing right outside… he does not like people who make fun…

Jack: Sarah, ‘beyond the pale’ means over the top…

Sarah Palin: Then why didn’t you just say so, like we do in small-town America? Did you go to one of those fancy Ivy League schools like Obama?

Jack: Do you think it’s fair to associate Obama with a guy who was a terrorist forty years ago, when Obama was only eight?

Sarah Palin: Yes, because the guy helped launch Obama’s political career more recently back in the mid-90s.

Jack: So that is the same as “pallin” around? Sarah, your husband was a registered member of the Alaska Independence Party from the mid-90s until 2002. Isn’t your husband’s recent association with a secessionist party more egregious than Obama serving as one of the members of an education board, which happened to include a long rehabilitated ex-terrorist?

Sarah Palin: What’s your point, Jack? The people of Alaska still voted for me as their Governor.

Jack: Hey, maybe they all want to hook up with Russia! Who knows? Fifteen years from now I could say that I was “pallin” around with you just because of this one fake interview?

Sarah Palin: Hey, I am not looking beyond this election right now. Fifteen years is a long time in politics. What else you got?

Jack: Is it true that you told Bill Kristol that you wanted Senator McCain to take the gloves off?

Sarah Palin: Sure. He needs to bring up that Wright stuff, too!

Jack: I don’t think you want to go there, given that you are all over YouTube getting exorcised by a witch doctor from Africa?

Sarah Palin: Oh well, that pastor was getting rid of my demons, not demonizing my country!

Jack: What demons?

Sarah Palin: That’s personal, Jack.

Jack: OK. I would like you to answer this last question without using any one of the following words: bridge, maverick, reform, surge, victory, and exceptional. OK, why do you think Senator McCain will make a better president than Senator Obama?

Sarah Palin: Umm… because he always puts his country first!

Jack: But, you heard Obama say at his convention speech, “We all put our country first..."

Sarah Palin: I’d love to debate you, Jack, but that was your last question. Hey, Todd, can you show Jack out the door and send in the next wannabe… and get me an aspirin…

Jack: Thank you, Sara… When you build your house, call me home…

Sarah Palin: What? Todd, this guy is weird…

Todd Palin: That’s Fleetwood Mac, honey…

Jack: Don't stop (thinking about tomorrow)…

Folks, she could actually turn out to be our next Vice President! And you thought it couldn’t get any scarier after Cheney!

Avoiding Déjà vu All Over Again In U.S. Foreign Policy

(This article was written during the Thanksgiving weekend, but is only being published now. General Musharraf is now "President" Musharraf - but given the circumstances of his transformation, these titles have no meaningful distinction, so I reproduce my original article as is.)

Since its creation sixty years ago, Pakistan has alternated between democracy and military rule every decade or so. So how many times are we going to watch a rerun of the same old movie, in which the U.S. government chooses to support a military dictatorship in Pakistan with money and arms rather than help its people sustain a liberal democracy? And, we choose to do this because it happens to serve our short-term interests better than it does their long-term future? While Pakistan has always been an invaluable ally in the conduct of U.S. foreign policy from the Kirkpatrick Doctrine of the 1980s to the Bush Doctrine of the 2000s, it invariably ends up as a discarded by-product when these doctrines have run their course.

President Bush must surely make a poor poker player. In June 2001, he misread the "honesty" of Russia's Putin by looking into his eyes to get a sense of his soul, which then subsequently proved to be non-existent. After 9/11 he similarly bought into the "sincerity" of Pakistan's Musharraf, who has also betrayed him by his recent actions. General Musharraf has turned out to be a run-of-the-mill dictator that Pakistan routinely produces every decade or so. Musharraf has repeatedly spoken the anti-terrorism language that Bush likes to hear, while acting consistently in an anti-democratic manner during his illegal reign. In this post-9/11 decade, the Bush Administration has spent almost $10 billion to-date on General Musharraf in the vain hopes that he would actually help us win the "war on terror" against an Al Qaeda-Taliban axis that permeates a significant yet nebulous cross-section of Afghani-Pakistani society.

Meanwhile the Bush Administration has more or less ignored the Pakistani people's ever increasing demands for a more meaningful democracy. Hollywood will soon release "Charlie Wilson's War," a movie which depicts how the U.S. coddled another Pakistani military dictator back in the 1980s – in order to get his support in throwing the Soviets out of Afghanistan. Ironically, after Pakistan had helped the U.S. achieve that important goal in 1989, the elder President Bush rewarded them by withholding deliveries of F-16 fighter jets as necessitated by the 1990 Pressler Amendment. Despite the Pressler sanctions, in 1998 Pakistan defiantly carried out its first nuclear test, which forced President Clinton to impose sanctions on a fragile nation in the waning phase of its democratic decade.

In the post-Soviet 1990s, Pakistan also helped an idling Afghan mujaheddin coalesce into the Taliban, which then usurped power in Afghanistan. The Taliban ruled Afghanistan up until 9/11 with an extremist ideology that included succor for Al Qaeda with the tacit support of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) branch of Pakistan's Army. Following 9/11, President Bush struck a Faustian bargain with Pakistan's relatively new military dictator, General Musharraf. In return for cash, arms, and the support of the U.S. government, President Bush sought Musharraf's assistance in crushing the very same Taliban, which Pakistan's military had previously helped create and flourish! Why the Bush Administration ever deemed this to be a winning proposition boggles the mind?

One of our founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, had defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. So when is the U.S. foreign policy establishment going to realize that we need to pursue lasting relationships based on our core values and that we should not repeatedly experiment with unprincipled dalliances of convenience? If U.S. foreign policy continues to placate WMD-possessing military dictators, such as Pakistan's Musharraf and North Korea's Kim Jong Il, while sanctioning or attacking WMD-seeking despots, such as Iran's Ahmedinejad and Iraq's now-deceased Saddam Hussein, then we are only going to hasten the WMD acquisition process amongst so-called rogue nations. More importantly, such a dubious policy makes the U.S. lose credibility in the eyes of the world. Especially in the case of Pakistan, which – despite selling its nuclear technology to rogue nations such as Iran, Libya and North Korea – was seen by the world as getting a free pass from the Bush Administration?

Senator Biden was absolutely right when he suggested that the Bush Administration had a tunnel-vision "Musharraf policy" as opposed to a broad-based "Pakistan policy." It is highly likely that if General Musharraf really starts to feel pressured, he will direct his ISI to instigate suicide bombings – not in the Afghan border region, but near the line of control that demarcates India and Pakistan in Kashmir. The Pakistani military has always had this time-tested way to quickly unite Pakistanis and rev up patriotic fervor – by accusing neighboring India of "exploiting" a volatile situation in Pakistan. In fact, General Musharraf could even have his Army engage in a few border skirmishes with India to distract Pakistani attention from his domestic troubles – this too has been done before.

Nonetheless, the U.S. can no longer afford to maintain a double standard in its dealings with Pakistan – seeking to ensure the stability of this nuclear-armed dictatorship in the short-term at the expense of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for its people in the long term – because this will eventually turn out to be a losing proposition for both sides. Sadly, our 1980s paradigm will not help resolve the current crisis in Pakistan. At least back then, Pakistan's military dictator, General Zia, was actually helping us fight a common enemy (the Soviets). This time around, General Musharraf has suppressed the very symbols of Pakistani democracy – judges, lawyers, the media and opposition leaders – while the bad guys (Al Qaeda-Taliban) continue to openly and freely consolidate their strength.

However, it is not too late to refocus U.S. policy in Pakistan towards freedom and democracy – especially since promoting these core American values were the stated objectives of the Bush second term. Such a policy change is all the more imperative because it is the moderate and literate elements of Pakistani society that are clamoring for democracy and the rule of law. The great Pakistani paradox, which demands the reconciling of a functioning liberal democracy with the seemingly conflicting demands of an orthodox Muslim theology, can only be resolved by the duly elected moderate factions in its society. Pakistan could yet become a shining example of a Muslim democracy, provided its military stops intervening every time it foresees or fakes a "crisis." We would much rather have a nuclear-armed Pakistan run by prudent civilians than by an unpredictable army or some of its more extremist elements. This is the only way we can hope to bring real stability to that critical part of the world.

Thus President Bush should refrain from aiding Pakistan's collapse by sending any more ambiguous messages to General Musharraf. He might recall how a similar lack of clarity on the elder Bush’s part prompted Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait in 1990 – the long term repercussions of which President Bush is still dealing with today. In two of the past three decades, military dictators have happened to rule Pakistan when acquiescing Republican presidents have occupied the White House. General Zia received as much support from the Reagan Administration in the 1980s as General Musharraf has from the Bush Administration in the 2000s.

Yet Musharraf must already be looking beyond the Bush presidency. He probably recognizes that if a Democratic Administration takes over from Bush, it will be less tolerant of the status quo in Pakistan. So General Musharraf will try to continue to consolidate his hold on power over the next fourteen months. And, he is doing so by adopting a classic line from the Bush playbook – claiming that he is "temporarily" trading liberty for security in Pakistan's ongoing assistance with Bush’s "war on terror" – which seems to be receiving sympathetic consideration from the Bush Administration.

In a November 2003 address at the 20th Anniversary of the National Endowment for Democracy, President Bush had proclaimed, "Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe — because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty. As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment, and violence ready for export. And with the spread of weapons that can bring catastrophic harm to our country and to our friends, it would be reckless to accept the status quo."

President Bush must surely realize that as long as our foreign policy continues to accommodate friendly dictators in allied Muslim nations such as Egypt, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, we are not going to make any real progress in the larger war on terrorism. If the president can't "walk his own talk" and continues to accept the status quo in Pakistan, how can he expect General Musharraf to behave any differently? If Musharraf is willing to pack his nation's Supreme Court with stooges and amend its constitution so that he can never be held accountable for his actions, he might as well appoint himself president for life and be done with it.

It is long past time for an American president to realize that the only way to avoid experiencing déjà vu all over again with our foreign policy is to let consistency in our principles trump the convenience of our causes, when these two ideals are in conflict. Also, in order to change hearts and minds in the Muslim world, we need to practice a less duplicitous foreign policy with our key Islamic allies. Only by refocusing our foreign policy on core American values, can we expect to make progress in Pakistan and the Muslim world. In fact, only by returning to a foreign policy that is solidly based on our cherished principles, can we regain the respect of the larger fraternity of nations? With the Annapolis summit in mind, now might be a good time for President Bush to send such an unequivocal message to the Arab world.

Don’t Misunderestimate the Strategery – It’s Stay the Course!

Our first MBA president has taken the Drucker principle of management by objectives and turned it on its head. President Bush has instead managed by strategy and manipulated the objectives to fit the strategy. This has clearly been the case with his Iraq policy, where the president has used a very nebulous and ill-defined strategy, which has been consistently referred to as “staying the course.” And yet, the objectives in Iraq have been frequently manipulated – from finding WMD, then establishing democracy, to defeating the insurgency, etc. – all to fit the same adamant “stay the course” strategy.

In the first year of the war, the objective was pretty much to find Iraq’s WMD and President Bush was determined to “stay the course” until they were found. Following David Kay’s shocking “I don’t think they existed” revelation in January 2004 about Iraq’s WMD, and the Iraq Survey Group’s subsequent confirmation of the same, President Bush changed his objective for Iraq. Following his own reelection, and with Iraqis then voting in their first elections, President Bush’s objective for Iraq became,

“a free, representative government that is an ally in the war on terror, and a beacon of hope in a part of the world that is desperate for reform.”

Alas, his strategy to get there remained essentially to “stay the course.”

Even more unfortunately, a month before President Bush stated this new lofty goal for Iraq, Vice President Cheney had already predicated “staying the course” by dismissing a growing insurgency as being “in its last throes.” In early 2006 a critical Shiite mosque in Samara was torched and much of central Iraq was overwhelmed by violence. So the Bush Administration changed its objective in Iraq yet again. The objective was no longer to build a liberal democracy but to focus on defeating a raging insurgency. Regrettably, the strategy to get there was essentially a “clear, hold, and build” version of “stay the course,” in the sense that it relied on Iraq’s notoriously unreliable security forces to do the “hold and build” part.

Meanwhile “staying the course” in Iraq for almost four years without tangible results did not go down well with the American public. So they expressed their displeasure in the 2006 mid-term elections by voting the president’s party out of power from both chambers in Congress. Shortly after, the Iraq Study Group (ISG) issued its recommendations and endorsed President Bush’s new post-election strategic goal for an Iraq that could

“govern itself, sustain itself, and defend itself.”

However, President Bush chose not to implement the ISG’s methodology of getting there. Instead in January 2007, President Bush finally announced a new “surge” strategy to be executed under the auspices of General Petraeus.

The new “surge” strategy relied on 30,000 more American troops to “clear, hold, and build” in and around Baghdad so as to bring down the violence and thus give Iraqis a chance at political reconciliation. Fortunately, even before the “surge” started, it benefited from unexpected success in the western Iraqi province of Anbar, where the local population turned against Al Qaeda insurgents. But sadly, the political apparatus in Baghdad far from reconciling began to fall apart as Sunni and Shia leaders began to desert the Al-Maliki government at regular intervals throughout the spring and summer.

By its very definition, a surge is a temporary phenomenon and hence the gains that come with it can also be transitory. The pockets of peace that have been established in the tribal areas of Iraq should thus be celebrated with caution. These nomadic desert tribes have had a history of transient and shifting loyalties. Nonetheless, to maintain these gains on the periphery, a strong central uniting force is absolutely critical. If an Iraqi Prime Minister is incapable of holding the center, a lasting peace will never come to Baghdad, and Iraq will eventually break apart.

Prior to the much anticipated Petraeus Report to Congress on September 10th, a couple of other independent sources, such as the General Accounting Office (GAO) and the Jones Commission also released their findings on post-surge Iraq. The GAO found that

“Iraq has failed to meet 11 of the 18 military and political objectives, or benchmarks, set by Congress and agreed on by Mr. Bush,”

according to a New York Times report dated September 4th. A couple of days later, Retired Marine Gen. James Jones presented his commission’s conclusions to the Senate Armed Services Committee. Per a NPR report,

“while Gen. Jones noted that there have been what he called ‘tactical successes’ with the U.S. troop surge, he said that Iraq remains torn by sectarian strife.”

Then, on the sixth anniversary of 9/11, General Petraeus testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee with his take on the “surge.” This is how ABC News reported one telling exchange between Senator John Warner and General Petraeus:

“Are you able to say at this time if we continue what you’ve laid before the Congress here as a strategy do you feel that is making America safer?” Warner asked.

“Sir, I believe that this is indeed the best course of action to achieve our objectives in Iraq,” Petraeus said.

“Does that make America safer?” Warner asked again.

“Sir,” Petraeus said, “I don't know actually.”

For having put General Petraeus in a position where he had to give such an answer, President Bush ought to feel ashamed. President Bush could not very well have made such a candid assessment himself, so he chose to hide behind General Petraeus. It is an even bigger shame that President Bush is thus politicizing our military by using its officers to effectively prolong his failed Iraq policy.

Following the 2006 mid-term elections and the subsequent Iraq Study Group report, President Bush made a gullible American public believe that his “surge” strategy would be different and its primary purpose would be to meet political objectives in Iraq. The “surge” has more or less given us the same old, same old. Nonetheless, President Bush and his die-hard supporters are intent on moving “forward to the past,” which is basically the same as “staying the course.” While the rest of us want to go “back to the future,” in which we could finally “give peace a chance.”

In an ironic case of real life imitating art, it is as if President Bush has all along been pleading with us not to “misunderestimate the strategery.” But seriously, how long can he muddle along in Iraq without further weakening our overstretched Army and Marines? How many more times are we going to hear that “the next six months are critical?” With no exit strategy in sight, when President Bush finally leaves office in January 2009, he is on track to leave behind not only a stalemate in Iraq, but also a broken military – that would be some legacy, indeed!

The Pakistani Paradox

There was a disconcerting common thread in Moshin Hamid's rather reluctant celebration of Pakistan's 60th birthday on the editorial pages of the August 15th New York Times. It turns out that Pakistan has been “a steadfast American ally” whenever it happened to be under military rule as was true with Gen. Mohammad Ayub Khan in the 1960s, Gen. Muhammad Zia ul-Haq in the 1980s, and Gen. Pervez Musharraf in the 2000s. Ironically, General Musharraf was also quite the American media darling when he was peddling his book last year – even making a coveted appearance on Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show.” However, given all the recent negative press, it has become rather apparent that the General has long since fallen out of favor.

As the reluctant fundamentalist’s article implies, and those of us who grew up in the Indian subcontinent are keenly aware, military dictators have never ever been as good for Pakistan as they have been for the United States. In keeping with this tradition, General Musharraf has had his illicit turn but now his time is up. The purported power-sharing agreement that he has been trying to finalize with ex-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto would be bad for both Pakistan and the United States – ipso facto, the idea having emanated out of the Bush Administration, it would surely be unpalatable to the larger Pakistani population.

Since 9/11 General Musharraf has been consistently accused of having it both ways in trying to balance his covert support for the Taliban versus his overt allegiance to the Bush Administration in hunting down Al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan. One could infer that President Bush has also been trying to play it both ways with Pakistan, given his bold pronouncement following 9/11 to be resolute against “any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism.” Despite knowing for a long time now that “Taliban and Qaeda fighters continue to find shelter and support on Pakistan’s side of the Afghan border,” President Bush has not acted decisively against them. The New York Times reported recently that the Bush Administration scrubbed “a 2005 American attempt to capture Qaeda leaders on Pakistani soil.”

Pakistan is and has always been the “Rodney Dangerfield” of nations – unable to command any respect. In fact, General Musharraf's confession to 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft during his book promotion interview last September confirms this viewpoint. Per the General’s own account, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage made a very blunt threat to Pakistan’s Director of Intelligence:

“Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age.”

Herein lies the Pakistani paradox, which appears to be a dilemma that actually confronts most Muslim nations – how to reconcile the requirements for a functioning liberal democracy against the seemingly conflicting demands of an orthodox Muslim theology? Democracy did not seem to be the perfect solution for India in 1947, but both democracy and a secular India have managed to survive and prosper through some tumultuous times. Pakistan could yet become a shining example of a Muslim democracy, provided its military stops stepping in every time it foresees or fakes a “crisis.” And, more importantly, the next time a military officer dares to overthrow an elected government in Pakistan, the United States should use whatever means necessary to force him back into his barracks.

A ‘New Clear’ Passage to India

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) came into force in 1970 after China’s first nuclear test in 1964 and before India’s first nuclear explosion ten years later. At that time, the NPT recognized as “nuclear weapon states,” only those nations that had conducted nuclear tests prior to 1967. These nations happened to be the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. Although the People’s Republic of China did not take its legitimate place as a UN member until 1971 and then signed the NPT only in 1992.

A recent New York Times editorial lamented that “When it comes to nuclear proliferation, Washington's only real policy is to reward its friends and punish its enemies.” Even if there were something wrong with this typically conservative principle, it should be noted that U.S. foreign policy had made some rather hefty concessions back in the early seventies to accommodate communist China. This was part of President Nixon’s “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” overture to engage one communist giant while trying to contain the other – the Soviet Union.

These progressive considerations of yesteryear have brought us to the current situation, in which China is now viewed by our foreign policy establishment as a long-term strategic threat to the United States. We find ourselves in this predicament, in large part, because our policy of engagement has helped steer China towards a market economy without bringing about commensurate change in its political system and authoritarian form of government.

The afore-mentioned Times editorial also stated that

“President Bush is understandably desperate for some kind of foreign policy success”

and thereby implying that his India strategy could actually chalk one up for him in the win column. It is quite likely that Bush’s forward-thinking nuclear deal with India might do just that. This is one instance where the neocons in the Bush Administration are actually seeing the forest for the trees by laying the foundation for a seminal paradigm shift in 21st century U.S. foreign policy – one that not only addresses our China syndrome, but also considers the larger threat as defined by the ongoing “global war on terror.”

So then why is Wall Street Journal columnist, Bret Stephens, not a happy camper? In a recent column he accused our “new clear” partner of keeping “bad company” with Iran. Mr. Stephens’ probably needs a refresher course on our own recent haphazard dealings with Iran. After 9/11, a “coalition -- made up of Iran, India, Russia and the Northern Alliance, and aided by massive American airpower -- drove the Taliban from power.” Despite this measure of Persian support, barely a couple of months later in his 2002 State of the Union speech, President Bush went on to declare Iran as a charter member of his “axis of evil.” Then, to further confound matters, he placed an unseemly reliance on dubious information from known Iranian-sympathizer, Ahmed Chalabi, and invaded Iraq in March 2003.

If that weren’t bewildering enough, since 2005 President Bush has relied heavily on the Iranian-backed government of Iraqi Prime Minister Al-Maliki to “sustain, govern and defend itself.” But now, with the weight of the impending Petraeus Report hanging over its head, the Bush Administration figures that Shiite Iran’s influence in the Middle East is getting out of control. So the Administration wants to hedge its bets on Iraq and re-supply our traditional Sunni allies, Saudi Arabia and its satellite Gulf States, over $20 billion in an arms deal. This is the same Saudi Arabia that – accounted for fifteen of nineteen hijackers on the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and – gave birth to Osama Bin Laden and the Bush Administration’s original “war on terror.” Is it any wonder then, why they – the Muslim nations – continue to hate us?

If Mr. Stephens could see the forest for the trees, he might have realized that going forward India could actually help us with our tenuous relationship with Iran. More importantly, these two nations could also help us snare our $50 million man, who has enjoyed a safe haven within the borders of another shaky Sunni ally, Pakistan, since his escape from the Tora Bora mountains in late 2001 . From a long term strategic standpoint, just as we look to India as a counter-weight to China in Asia, it is within our national security interests to have a Shia power counter-balance the traditional Sunni hegemony in the Middle East.

From a more practical standpoint, our “new clear” passage to India could mutually benefit not only our two great democracies, but also it could become the basis for new, long-term alliances throughout the western world. My reasoning is based on an observation that I had first made in my 2005 book, “The Bush Diaries,” and is worth repeating:

“The population of the world can be divided into roughly four equal quadrants — Judeo-Christian, Hindu-Buddhist, Muslim, and Communist. A vast majority of the people that constitute the Judeo-Christian and Hindu-Buddhist quadrants happen to live in secular democracies. It would therefore seem natural for these quadrants to be more closely aligned, since they share similar economic and political value systems? One would hope that an alignment of this nature could become an ideal for peace and prosperity throughout the world.”