Just after President finishes his Oval Office speech on Iraq (and because they’re somewhat linked, Afghanistan), you may flip to your favorite cable news channel and listen to your favorite talking head or two banter on about the war’s history.  In an effort to set the record straight, here’s a quick guide to Barack Obama’s political history with Iraq (and by extension Afghanistan). If you want to a more detailed timeline, you can click over to the Washington Post, which has a good interactive map and timeline.  Or you can check out my new favorite site, LetMeGoogleThatForYou.com.

Here’s the bottom line: After reading just about ever single speech Obama has given on Iraq since 2002, he has been remarkably consistent for a politician.

He opposed the war, while being explicit that he’s comfortable with the use of force. He’s been steadfast that Bush was screwing around in Iraq while he should have been concentrating in Afghanistan.  Hence, this administration’s current policy is the continuation of Obama’s thinking since 2002.

However, once we were in Iraq, he recognized America’s ongoing national security concerns, and sought to promote debate on striking the balance between responsibility, national interest, and political reality.  Even though Obama opposed the surge, it was not because he was uncomfortable with using force, but because he felt that the threat of removing US troops would force political cooperation amongst Iraqi governing stakeholders.

Throughout his campaign, he stayed on message about bringing the war to a “responsible conclusion” a pledge that he has largely fulfilled.

The future is murky: Violence may return to haunt Iraq as the remaining troops are pulled out over the next 17 months (as George Bush’s 2008 SOFA dictates).   While a new Iraq government may request that continued presence of American forces past the 2011 deadline, it is dubious whether Obama, in the midst of a re-election bid, would reopen such a divisive arguement, particularly as America’s national security interests seem long-since secured.

Here are the details:

October 2, 2002: On the eve of a Congressional resolution authorizing President George Bush to use force in Iraq, Illinois State Senator Barack Obama gives a speech at a Chicago Anti-War Rally. Here’s what he said:

Let me begin by saying that although this has been billed as an anti-war rally, I stand before you as someone who is not opposed to war in all circumstances. …

After September 11th… I supported this [Bush] Administration’s pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance. … I don’t oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war.

October 12, 2004: In a debate for his Illinois Senate seat against Republican Alan Keyes, Obama said this of Iraq and Afghanistan:

Ambassador Keyes and I agree on one thing, and that is that the War on Terror has to be

vigorously fought. Where we part company is how to fight it, because I think Afghanistan in fact was not a preemptive war, it was a war launched directly against those who were responsible for 9-11. Iraq was a preemptive war based on faulty evidence. … Now, us having gone in there, I do think we now have a deep national security interest in making certain that Iraq is stable. If is it not stable, not only are we going to have a humanitarian crisis, I think we are also going to have a huge national security problem on our ands—because, ironically, it has become a hotbed of terrorists consequence, in part, of our incursion there.

November 22, 2005. A speech to the Chicago Council of Foreign Relations found Obama in a reflective mood:

What do we want to accomplish now that we are in Iraq, and what is possible to accomplish? What kind of actions can we take to ensure not only a safe and stable Iraq, but that will also preserve our capacity to rebuild Afghanistan, isolate and apprehend terrorist cells, preserve our long-term military readiness, and devote the resources needed to shore up our homeland security?

[G]iven the enormous stakes in Iraq, I believe that those of us who are involved in shaping our national security policies should do what we believe is right, not merely what is politically expedient….

But I believe that, having waged a war that has unleashed daily carnage and uncertainty in Iraq, we have to manage our exit in a responsible way – with the hope of leaving a stable foundation for the future, but at the very least taking care not to plunge the country into an even deeper and, perhaps, irreparable crisis.

January 9, 2006. Senator Obama podcast following a trip to Baghdad:

I think the general view was that we were in such a delicate situation right now and that there was so little institutional capacity on the part of the Iraqi government, that a full military withdrawal at this point would probably result in significant civil war and potentially hundreds of thousands of deaths.

January 25, 2006. Senator Obama podcast following post-trip meeting with George Bush:

I believe we need to bring our troops home as quickly as possible, but to do so in a way that does not precipitate all out civil war in Iraq.

On February 22, 2006, the Sumarra Mosque, one of the holiest sites in Shiite Islam, is bombed.  The repercussions set off a spiral of increasing violence that many call a civil war.

June 26, 2006. Senator Obama floor statement on Iraq following proposed Kerry Amendment, which called for redeployment of troops.

I would like nothing more than to support the Kerry Amendment; to bring our brave troops home on a date certain, and spare the American people more pain, suffering and sorrow.

But having visited Iraq, I’m also acutely aware that a precipitous withdrawal of our troops, driven by Congressional edict rather than the realities on the ground, will not undo the mistakes made by this Administration. It could compound them. …

I do not believe that setting a date certain for the total withdrawal of U.S. troops is the best approach to achieving, in a methodical and responsible way, the three basic goals that should drive our Iraq policy: that is, 1) stabilizing Iraq and giving the factions within Iraq the space they need to forge a political settlement; 2) containing and ultimately defeating the insurgency in Iraq; and 3) bringing our troops safely home.

…

I cannot support the Kerry Amendment. Instead, I am a cosponsor of the Levin amendment, which gives us the best opportunity to find this balance between our need to begin a phase-down and our need to help stabilize Iraq.

November 20, 2006. Senator Obama speaks to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs:

The President should announce to the Iraqi people that our policy will include a gradual and substantial reduction in U.S. forces. He should then work with our military commanders to map out the best plan for such a redeployment and determine precise levels and dates. … [I]t could be suspended if at any point U.S. commanders believe that a further reduction would put American troops in danger. …

Perhaps most importantly, some of these troops could be redeployed to Afghanistan, where our lack of focus and commitment of resources has led to an increasing deterioration of the security situation there. The President’s decision to go to war in Iraq has had disastrous consequences for Afghanistan — we have seen a fierce Taliban offensive, a spike in terrorist attacks, and a narcotrafficking problem spiral out of control.

In January 2007, George Bush announced ‘the Surge’, which Obama opposed. Here’s a video. Here’s what Obama said in a Senate floor statement:

The President’s decision to move forward with this escalation anyway, despite all evidence and military advice to the contrary, is the terrible consequence of the decision to give him the broad, open-ended authority to wage this war back in 2002…. I cannot in good conscience support this escalation.

Drawing down our troops in Iraq will put pressure on Iraqis to arrive at the political settlement that is needed and allow us to redeploy additional troops in Afghanistan… My plan would couple this phased redeployment with an enhanced effort to train Iraqi security forces.

As the political narrative tells us, “the surge worked.” However, if you dig a little deeper, you’ll find that three events really helped bring about a de-escalation in violence in Iraq in 2007.  Read this op-ed from my friend Michael Kleinman on what really happened.

October 2, 2007.  Early in the presidential campaign, Senator Obama pledges to bring home troops within 16 months of taking office:

I will begin to remove our troops from Iraq immediately. I will remove one or two brigades a month and get all of our combat troops out of Iraq within 16 months. The only troops I will keep in Iraq will perform the limited missions of protecting our diplomats and carrying out targeted strikes on Al Qaeda.

November 19, 2008. Just before leaving office, George Bush negotiates a new Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqi government.  It calls for US troops to be out of Iraq’s cities and towns by mid-2009 and out of the country altogether by the end of 2011.  Read the entire SOFA here.  Obama’s campaign timeline is more-or-less in line with Bush’s.

January 21, 2009. Just after taking office, President Obama met with military leaders and asked them to draw up a 16-month withdrawal plan from Iraq.

February 27, 2009. Obama tells Congressional leaders that he’s planning to pull all combat troops out of Iraq by August 2010. That 19 month time-line is three longer than his campaign promise. He tells lawmakers that he intends to keep 35,000-50,000 non-combat forces in the country for training and force protection. Some Democratic Congressional members are upset at the remaining forces; Generals Petraeus and Odierno are supportive.

August 25, 2010: U.S. troop numbers in Iraq at 49,700.

photo credit: U.S. Army’s photostream

For the first time in 20 months, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators will sit down face-to-face in Washington, DC this week.  Building on a year and a half of shuttle diplomacy “proximity talks” shepherded by George Mitchell, the White House’s Middle East envoy, this Wednesday, September 1, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu will sit down with his Palestinian counterpart, Mahmoud Abbas.

There’s been broad skepticism surrounding these talks from the get-go.  Is the Obama administration convening talks for domestic political reasons within a pessimistic geo-political environment, or because there’s actual hope?  My colleague Will Marshall shares this decidedly luke-warm take: “It’s not hard to find grounds for pessimism,” he wrote last week here on ProgressiveFix.

Here are five ways to gauge the talks’ success:

1. Cameras
Yes, yes – a press conference ain’t much, what with the security and happiness of millions hanging in the balance.  But the mere act of holding a joint press conference with Obama stewarding Abbas and Netanyahu at least indicates the talks were a basis for some extraordinarily cautious optimism.  It would be better than, say, both leaders departing quietly in the middle of the night without so much as a word to the cameras.  But this is the low bar the situation demands.

2. Netanyahu’s position on the settlement moratorium
Upon assuming office last year, Netayahu issued a 10-month moratorium on construction in Israeli settlements in the West Bank.  It is due to expire in late September, and Netanyahu, facing right-wing pressure from within his coalition, has said that building will resume.

It is, of course, a shame that the extraordinarily complex issue of where and how to build settlements has been reduced to the binary choice of “build” or “don’t build”.  That’s why if Netanyahu, fresh off a positive meeting with Obama in July, can finesse his pledge to continue construction (and please his political base) while giving ground somewhere to show the Palestinians and Obama that he’s serious, we might be in business.

3. Level of buy-in from the “moderate” Middle Eastern countries
Jordan’s King Abdullah and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak are planning to attend.  While neither leader is on extraordinarily solid political ground domestically (which may turn out to be the understatement of the year for Mubarak, who faces a potentially explosive election), Abbas needs their blessing to create breathing room with the likes of the nay-sayers in the Arab League, who are already predicting failure but remain generally supportive of talks because of Obama’s “sincerity”.  Building an Arab coalition around a deal is key, so watch whether they are vocally supportive of the meeting and what message they take back home.

4. A statement from Hillary Clinton
She’ll be the direct intermediary between the two, so watch her closely. Everything from body-language to expression to the actual words out of her mouth will be important.  If there’s a tense, negative air surrounding the talks, the Secretary might just literally embody them.

5. Reactions in Israeli press
Israel has a wide selection of English language publications of good quality, like the Jerusalem Post and Ha’aretz.  Keep an eye on what they’re saying – for them, the talks will be issue #1 this week and will no doubt maintain lively commentary.  They were the bell-weather for Netanyahu’s trip to DC in July, and the Israeli English-language press deemed that trip a success, which became the de facto public narrative.

Photo credit: Templar 1307’s photo stream

Gasp!  The CIA is paying bad people in Afghanistan!

The New York Times implies there’s a problem with fighting corruption in the Afghan government while paying the corrupt, in this case Mohammed Zia Salehi, the chief administration on Afghanistan’s National Security Council:

Mr. Salehi’s relationship with the C.I.A. underscores deep contradictions at the heart of the Obama administration’s policy in Afghanistan, with American officials simultaneously demanding that Hamid Karzai root out the corruption that pervades his government while sometimes subsidizing the very people suspected of perpetrating it.

That’s not right.  If we begin holding every official in Afghanistan to some vague corruption-based litmus test, the intelligence community would be completely handcuffed: I’d bet you a paycheck that you could pin some sort of corruption charge on every single official in the entire country.

After all, it’s a bit of a Catch-22, right?  If Afghanistan was a graft-free Jeffersonian democracy, CIA wouldn’t have such a need need to recruit unsavory sources like Salehi.  But the country is a mess, and our intelligence community better damn-well have its ear to the ground.  And if we really want to stop corruption at the highest level, Salehi has regular access to the biggest fish of them all:  Karzai.  That’s highly valuable.

I understand the desire to keep things above-board, but tough situations demand hard choices, and paying a well-placed but corrupt source is clearly the lesser evil.

Photo credit: World Economic Forum’s photostream

U.S. officials say they have al Qaeda on the ropes in Pakistan. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for al Qaeda’s homicidal ideology, which is spreading to extremists in other Muslim countries. This poses new risks for Americans, and highlights a big hole in President Obama’s counter-terrorism policies.

According to The Washington Post, the Central Intelligence Agency now rates al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a Yemen-based offshoot, as an even greater threat than Osama bin Laden’s original. Under the “spiritual” guidance of Anwar a-Aulaqi, a cleric and U.S. citizen, AQAP is busy plotting attacks on America, including a failed attempt earlier this year to set off a car bomb in Times Square.

As my colleague Jim Arkedis pointed out yesterday, this doesn’t mean AQAP is capable of staging 9/11-scale attacks on our country. But since Aulaqi also counseled Nidal Malik Hasan, the U.S. Army major accused of gunning down 13 Americans at Fort Hood last year, the AQAP threat seems real enough.

Meanwhile, in the Hobbesian nightmare that is Somalia, another al Qaeda affiliate, Al Shabab, launched a suicide attack this week that killed 32 people at a Mogadishu hotel. Last month, the group claimed responsibility for a massacre of over 70 people watching the World Cup at a bar in neighboring Uganda.

And just last week, al Qaeda’s Iraq franchise launched a suicide attack that killed 57 job seekers at an army recruitment center in Baghdad.

What’s the message in all this carnage? That al Qaeda continues to offer the brand of choice to aspiring jihadists, who are more than willing to use its gruesome tactics to advance their local ambitions.

What can our government do to stop this contagion of suicide and mass casualty terror attacks?

Self-defense requires that we shift some military and intelligence resources to these new hot spots. But unless we want to be drawn into a never-ending game of terrorist whack-a-mole, we also need to do a better job of discrediting the ideology that motivates al Qaeda and its affiliates to kill in Islam’s name.

A trenchant strategy for doing just than is detailed in Fighting the Ideological Battle, an excellent study by the Washington Institute for Near East Studies. It begins with a step that the Obama administration unfortunately has been reluctant to take, for fear of conflating violent extremism and Islam: acknowledging the essentially ideological nature of the terrorist threat. We need to openly contest and challenge the Islamist catalogue of grievances, the better to drive the wedge deeper between them and the decent majority of Muslims who no part of their apocalyptic visions.

Our government also needs an explicit strategy for shoring up failing or fragile states that are particularly vulnerable to extremist violence. It’s no accident that al Qaeda and its offshoots flourish in ungoverned spaces within countries like Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Finally, we need to keep driving home the essential point about al Qaeda’s growing global franchise: its victims are overwhelmingly civilians, and Muslim civilians at that. That’s why, even as al Qaeda franchises have cropped up, support for terror attacks on civilians has fallen among Muslim publics. And al Qaeda’s vicious tactics have sparked a backlash even from some of the organization’s founders and leading theoreticians. Rather than being overly sensitive about lending credence to the Islamists’ “clash of civilizations” rhetoric, our government should miss no chance to stand in solidarity with the victims of Islamist ideology.

Photo credit: U.S. Army photostream

I pity journalists on the terrorism beat.  Take Greg Miller and Peter Finn’s piece in the Washington Post this morning, entitled “CIA sees increased threat in Yemen,” referring to the al Qaeda splinter group called Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (or AQAP). The journalists’ challenge is to quantify the scale and immediacy of the “threat”, an amorphous term that implies danger, yet remains extraordinarily difficult to quantify.

The story, based on analysis from the CIA, describes AQAP as the “most urgent threat to U.S. Security.”  It’s critical to properly categorize the threat because left undefined, the average American’s basis of comparison for a terrorism is the devastation of September 11th.  Hell, I spent five years trying to brief relatively high-ranking Pentagon officials on this stuff, and 9/11 was their point of departure too.  Nuance is important in defining terrorist threat – without it, government officials tend to over-react, going into CYA-mode (that’d be “cover your ass”) that guards against today’s headline rather than the overall, long-term picture.

Of course, part of the problem is that the CIA source in the article is only willing to go so far with the information he/she provides – sufficing at such vague quotes as “increased threat” and “on the upswing” while pointing to evidence of the group’s prowess that we already have:  the Christmas Day plot and radical cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi’s increasing activity.  Give away more, and the source could  end up busted.

So what are we talking about here?  Does the “increased threat” mean AQAP can pull off a massive terrorist attack on American soil? How far from its base in Yemen can the network reach?  Is it a threat to American only interests in the Middle East region? Is the network confined to smaller attacks? Civilian or military targets? What?

As the article asserts, AQAP may now be more dangerous that Osama Bin Laden’s war-ravaged and hiding clique, but that’s a dangerous comparison to make.  The United States has dedicated nearly ten years to degrading al Qaeda’s core group, and AQAP’s relative strength – and the resources dedicated to combatting them – should be understood within that context.

And that’s why in absolute terms, I wouldn’t lose sleep over AQAP launching a massive, 9/11-style attack against the United States just yet.  That’s because the terrorist threat is measured by marriage of a group’s intentions plus its capabilities: AQAP may really, really want to strike New York (intent), but hasn’t yet developed the operational expertise of training, financing, internal security, and logistics (capabilities) to succeed.

Currently, I’d assess that AQAP  has the intentions and capabilities to threaten American security in two ways: First, we’re likely to see a continuation of small attempts against public targets in the U.S.,  in the mold of the Christmas Day attempt.  These attacks will be launched by single operatives that have plausible cover and legit paperwork to slip over the American border.  However, coordinating a massive terrorist attack with many operatives against thousands of Americans continues to remain several years off.

Second, the group likely does pose a threat to American interests in Yemen or the broader region.  The 10th anniversary of the USS COLE bombing is upon us, which serves as a fitting reminder that Bin Laden’s al Qaeda has successfully executed complex terrorist attacks against hardened American targets in Yemen before.  But until AQAP pulls off an attack of this nature – like an embassy bombing akin to the 1998 attacks in Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam – I can only assess that the group’s ability to project power will remain confined to the region.

In sum, AQAP remains one to watch.  The intelligence community is right to be concerned about the group’s apparently amassing capabilities, but keep in mind that terrorist attacks are often a building-block process: a group must crawl before it can walk, and walk before it can run.

Right now, AQAP seems to be taking its first few steps.  The IC seems to recognize that, and will be working hard to knock it back on all fours.

Photo credit: eesti’s photostream

When Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari played the terrorism card Monday appealing for flood relief funds, I had to stop my eyeballs from reflexively rolling back in my head.  Zardari called the flood the “ideal hope of the radical” and cast relief efforts as a struggle between his government and Islamic extremists.  On the surface, it sounds cheap, it sounds disingenuous.  Worse yet, it sounds like something George W. Bush would say.  But desperate to spur the international community and its sluggish financial response to the crisis, Zardari made a calculated pitch framed in stark terms:  help us or the terrorists win.

The thing is, he might just have a point.  The flood might not be the radical’s ideal hope, but there is certainly an opportunity to further divide Pakistani’s allegiances.

Disaster relief is the ultimate test of a government’s competence.  Its citizens are dying, homeless, and starving, and they know where the buck stops.  If the government fails to address basic survival needs, a vacuum in public trust can open almost instantaneously.

On the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, it’s fitting to examine the dispassionate political parallels.  After winning the 2004 election with 51 percent of the vote, Bush’s approval hovered just shy of 50 percent through mid-2005.  When Katrina hit in mid-2005, his ratings nose-dived from 48 percent in June to 39 percent by November.  After a brief recovery in late 2005, Bush was toast for the rest of his presidency, leaving office with an awesomely bad 23 percent on Election Day 2008.

Zardari has Bush-like unpopularity: the Pew Research Center’s July poll gave him just a 20 percent favorability rating amongst Pakistanis, and a full 77 percent say his influence is downright negative.  Just 25 percent rate the national government as having a “good influence”.

It is safe to say that if Zardari’s government continues to fail delivering swift relief aid, that Pakistanis are ready to support whoever will.  One of those possibilities is Zardari’s chief rival, Nawaz Sharif, who has garnered a tidy 70 percent approval rating and maintains a deep desire to return to the top of Pakistani politics.  While the U.S. should have no great preference for individuals over democratic institutions, a messy political fight in the midst of relief efforts would only cause more suffering.

A more serious concern is the Pakistani Taliban, which could draw on the example of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.  That group has won hearts and minds in the public services business in southern Lebanon, too.

Zardari may never be America’s best bud, but he understands that it is in Pakistan’s interest to have a working strategic relationship with the United States.  While humanitarian grounds should be enough to motivate the world’s rich countries to give generously to Pakistan, that hasn’t proven the case.  Short-term political instability and Taliban opportunism should be.

Photo Credit: DFID – UK Department for International Development’s photostream

It took a lot of arm-twisting, but Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced last week that Israel and the Palestinians have agreed to return to the bargaining table. The Obama administration’s faith in the power of diplomacy, which some consider misplaced, is about to face its sternest test.

It’s not hard to find grounds for pessimism. For one thing, Palestinian President President Mahmoud Abbas agreed to participate only under heavy U.S. pressure. He had to give up his demand that Israel continue the freeze on settlements as a precondition for talks, though the “Quartet” (the U.S., Europe, Russia and the United Nations) cooked up a face-saving declaration last Friday.

The agenda for negotiations has been left intentionally vague, so as to give neither side a pretext for refusing to participate. Somehow, the dynamic of face-to-face talks itself is supposed to lead to a peace deal over the next 12 months. Yet there’s been little change in the internal political realities – the West Bank/Gaza split and Netanyahu’s dependence on right-wing coalition partners to govern – that have made this such an unpropitious time for a comprehensive peace settlement.

The operative theory here seems to be that U.S. can more effectively pressure both sides to make concessions – through “bridging proposals” – in the context of direct negotiations. For example, Netanyahu will more likely extend the moratorium on new settlements, lest he be accused of scuttling the talks. U.S. officials also believe that Netanyahu’s hard-liner credentials will make it easier for him to sell a skeptical Israeli public on any deal reached with the Palestinians.

It’s also widely assumed that Abbas needs to demonstrate that his relative moderation and support for a two-state solution can deliver concrete benefits to Palestinians. But if Yassir Arafat, who presided over a more unified Palestinian authority couldn’t bring himself to embrace a two-state deal, its hard to see how a far weaker Abbas can, especially with Hamas looking over his shoulder.

Nonetheless, it’s axiomatic in U.S. diplomatic circles that it’s always better to have the two sides talking than not. The absence of hope for a political solution leaves the field to the radical rejectionists: Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran.

Maybe so, but two large doubts hang over the coming talks. First, it’s not clear, for either Netanyahu or Abbas, that perpetuating the status quo, for all its frustrations, is a riskier course than making difficult concessions on territory, refugees, the status of Jerusalem and other traditional sticking points. Second, it’s not evident that either leader, even if he thought such risks worth taking, could forge a domestic consensus for a peace deal. So why shove them together now?

The answer may have more to do with America’s efforts to combat radicalism and violent extremism in the region than any profound yearning for peace among Israelis and Palestinians. If so, it’s going to be a long year.

Photo credit: bulletsburning’s photostream

The story leading the day in the New York Times and Washington Post details the release of some 90,000 U.S. military documents by Wikileaks. Many of which detail the level of coordination between elements within Pakistan’s intelligence service, the ISI, and the Taliban operating in Afghanistan.  In fact, the Taliban and ranking officers within the ISI have worked together is not “news.”  Pick up a copy of Steve Coll’s brilliant Ghost Wars, which ably details the relationship.  Here’s an excerpt from a PBS Frontline interview with Coll on the topic:

Frontline: You describe [the Taliban] as a client of the ISI.

Coll: They received guns; they received money; they received fuel; they received infrastructure support. They also, we know, had direct on-the-ground support from undercover Pakistani officers in civilian clothes who would participate in particular military battles.

Frontline: Is it a fair characterization to say that the Taliban were an asset of the ISI?

Coll: They were an asset of the ISI. I think it’s impossible to understand the Taliban’s military triumph in Afghanistan, culminating in their takeover of Kabul in 1996, without understanding that they were a proxy force, a client of the Pakistan army, and benefited from all of the materiel support that the Pakistan army could provide them, given its own constrained resources.

The Taliban were important to the ISI in the late 1990s for another reason. The ISI also promoted a rebellion against what it regarded as Indian occupation in Kashmir. The Taliban in Afghanistan provided logistical support, training and other bases that the ISI could use to train and develop its Kashmir rebellion as well.

To sum it up:  The ISI has used the Taliban for more than 15 years as a proxy force in Afghanistan.  First, they served as a bulwark against the spread of Soviet communism.  Old habits die hard, so when the Americans arrived, the ISI viewed collaboration with the Taliban as a natural point of influence that could be used to suit its interest — namely, keeping Afghanistan weak and unstable and impossible to dominate its neighbor.

Some in the blogosphere have treated Wikileaks’ revelation with a yawn.  Check out Andrew Exum’s dripping-with-sarcasm post comparing the shock-value of the story to news that Liberace likes dudes.  So sure, if you’re in the expert community, it’s easy to brush off as a non-story.

However, getting these stories out to major news outlets has relevance.  Spencer Ackerman points out that the Wikileaks information provides a “new depth of detail” about the long-held ties.

More importantly, it raises the issue to a level that people controlling the purse strings can’t ignore.  I’ll bet you a crisp dollar bill that John Kerry has read Ghost Wars.  I’ll double down on the fact that Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, soon moves lickity-split to convene an oversight hearing that reexamines the $500 million that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton just promised to the Pakistanis last week for two hydroelectric projects, a pledge that comes on the heels of a massive $7.5 billion Pakistan aid package.  Keep in mind that this assistance was essentially conditioned on strengthening the Pakistani civilian government at the expense of its military and intelligence services and was accepted by the Pakistanis after some rather significant heartburn in Islamabad.

The bottom line is that widespread public disclosure of the depth of the Taliban-ISI contacts ultimately creates leverage for the Americans, and that’s a good thing.

UPDATE:  It occurred to me last night that by saying leverage created by the release of classified information was “a good thing” may have tacitly endorsed the idea that I favor future leaks of classified information.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  As a veteran of five years inside the intelligence committee, I deplore leaks of all kinds — they harm sources and methods, which in turn jeopardizes the IC and military’s abilities to collect information germane to America’s national security.  That leverage was created by the release of information is a fortunate byproduct of the leak.  My preference would been to have none at all.

Photo Credit: DVIDSHUB’s Photostream