I’d like to think Noah Shachtman started to think seriously about his latest policy proposal around the time he wrote this policy memo for PPI in January. But it’s more likely he had been chewing over the idea — articulated in the current issue of Wired magazine — to break up the National Security Agency (NSA) far earlier.

It’s a fairly daring proposal on the surface because, after all, even those of us who have worked in the intelligence community don’t have a great handle on what makes the NSA tick. Dissemination of intelligence products is so tightly controlled — even within the intelligence community — that we at NCIS would sometimes wonder (jokingly) if the NSA was actually on our side.

Here’s the gist:

NSA headquarters — the “Puzzle Palace” — in Fort Meade, Maryland, is actually home to two different agencies under one roof. There’s the signals-intelligence directorate, the Big Brothers who, it is said, can tap into any electronic communication. And there’s the information-assurance directorate, the cybersecurity nerds who make sure our government’s computers and telecommunications systems are hacker- and eavesdropper-free. In other words, there’s a locked-down spy division and a relatively open geek division. The problem is, their goals are often in opposition. One team wants to exploit software holes; the other wants to repair them. This has created a conflict — especially when it comes to working with outsiders in need of the NSA’s assistance. Fortunately, there’s a relatively simple solution: We should break up the NSA.

Noah advocates essentially splitting the offense (signals intelligence) from the defense (information assurance). Think of it in football terms: O and D can peacefully co-exist under a head coach in the NFL because they’re both working against a different team. But in the cyberwars, it’s unclear who the other team is, and the NSA runs the risk of putting its O and D on the field against one another.

To alleviate this problem, Shachtman wants to create a new Cyber Security Agency with the information assurance directorate. He believes the new CSA would be more trusted and thus able to coordinate better with outside cyber stakeholders. The directorates already have separate budgets and oversight, so it shouldn’t be all that painful.

That sounds about right to me.  However, I should note that Noah’s piece doesn’t elaborate on the drawbacks of this approach. Is that because they’re aren’t any, or because we wouldn’t know them until it’s too late? That’s worth looking into.

Now that the Obama administration has chastised Israel for expanding settlements in East Jerusalem, it should turn its attention to Mughrabi Square.

Palestinian students gathered earlier this month to dedicate a square in the West Bank town of El Bireh to the memory of Dala Mughrabi, a young woman responsible for the worst terrorist attack in Israel’s history. The 19-year-old Mughrabi led a Palestinian terror squad that landed on a beach near Tel Aviv in 1978. In the ensuing massacre, 38 Israeli civilians were killed, including 13 children. An American photographer, Gail Rubin, was also slain.

According to the New York Times, the event was organized by the youth wing of Fatah, the ruling party led by President Mahmoud Abbas. Amid Israeli protests that it would violate their pledges to refrain from “incitement,” most top Palestinian leaders skipped the ceremony. But not all, as the Times reported:

“We are all Dala Mughrabi,” declared Tawfiq Tirawi, a member of the Fatah Central Committee, the party’s main decision-making body, who came to join the students. “For us she is not a terrorist,” he said, but rather “a fighter who fought for the liberation of her own land.”

The incident was overshadowed by the uproar over Israel’s announcement – during a visit by Vice President Joe Biden — of plans to add 1,600 housing units in East Jerusalem.

U.S. officials reacted furiously, calling the announcement an “insult” and demanding apologies from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Some observers see the U.S. outrage as contrived and likely counterproductive. After all, the settlement freeze announced last year by Netanyahu had explicitly exempted East Jerusalem. Others, like my colleague Jim Arkedis, saw the rebuke as essential to reestablishing America’s credentials as an “honest broker” in Middle East peace talks.
In any case, U.S. leaders ought to be at least as upset by the glorification of terrorists as they are by Israel’s settlement policies. Apparently emboldened by the settlement furor, Abbas told U.S. peace envoy George Mitchell this week that Palestinians have a “national right of resistance” to Israeli occupation.

Rebranding terrorism as “resistance” not only undermines prospects for a just resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict, it also validates the barbarous crimes against humanity perpetrated by al Qaeda and other extremist groups. That’s why U.S. leaders must categorically reject Palestinian attempts to justify attacks on civilians and to make martyrs out of murderers.

We interrupt this somewhat unscheduled progressive glee to make a brief point about national security. The Washington Post has a pointed op-ed today on Guantanamo Bay and military tribunals.

Now, let’s be clear: There are differing views within the progressive movement about the viability, constitutionality and political realities of trying terrorism suspects. There has been significant grief from progressive quarters that the administration is laying the groundwork to reverse its decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court. (For the record, my personal view is that I stand with what the president said at the National Archives last year.) But lost in this division, there’s one issue in the Post‘s piece that we progressives should seize:

Congress and the president should hammer out a set of rules to guide judges on how to handle the Guantanamo habeas cases still wending their way through the system. And they need to agree on a legal framework to govern indefinite detentions now and in the future. [Italics mine]

Let us not forget that the Bush administration force-fed Obama this shit-sandwich. Rather than construct a legal framework to deal with terrorism detainees, the Bush White House took a pass by locking them up in GTMO and hoping the problem would never resurface. It really didn’t, until the Bushies were back cutting brush at Crawford. So, if progressives want to avoid fights and internal fallouts over terrorism suspect issues in the future, they have to define the rules of the road.

And while we can argue about the threshold of evidence regarding civilian vs. military trials, one idea that merits serious consideration is something that PPI has pushed in the past — national security courts. Here’s an excerpt from our “Memo to the New President” by Harvey Rishikof:

The thrust of the idea is to have a dedicated set of federal trial judges working with an expert bar of federal and military prosecutors and defense counsel — all with high-level security clearances. Such a court could accommodate the particular challenges of prosecuting terrorism cases in a manner wholly consistent with the Constitution, the common law, international conventions, and the relevant statutes.

This would be no sealed-off Star Chamber; trials would be open to the public unless there were truly compelling reasons to limit access in a particular case. Such openness would help give our own people and our allies the necessary proof that the United States is reasserting its identity as a champion of human rights and due process.

It’s a good idea that deserves consideration as part of the solution, even if the national security court use is ultimately mixed in with civilian and/or military trials. But the Obama administration could make things a lot easier on itself if it solved the problem with an institutional fix, and not just muddling through like they are with KSM.

…and now you can return to smiling ear-to-ear about health care.

Reports of just how warped the North Korean regime is occasionally filter out to the broader world from time to time. This dispatch in the New York Times has got to be one of the more grotesque stories we’ve heard in a while:

North Korea has arrested and possibly executed its top financial official as it struggles to contain chaos set off by its botched attempt to halt inflation through a radical currency revaluation, according to news reports Thursday in South Korea.

[…]

Mr. Pak “was executed at a firing range in Pyongyang on the trumped-up charges of being an antirevolutionary element as public sentiments worsened over the failure of the currency reform,” reported the South Korean news agency Yonhap, quoting unnamed sources in North Korea.

Here’s where Mr. Pak screwed up:

In late November, North Korea suddenly told its people that it would introduce new banknotes, ordering them to turn in their old bills for new ones at a rate of 100 to 1. It also put a cap on how much old money they could swap for the new currency.

The shock measure was meant to arrest runaway inflation and crack down on illegal markets in the socialist state. But it only aggravated the food crisis, creating shortages and soaring prices, and reportedly led to isolated but highly unusual outbursts of protest in the totalitarian state.

I should note that Mr. Pak’s execution hasn’t been confirmed. But if it is, this is really serious stuff that the U.S. can’t ignore. When it comes to the internal machinations of a completely isolated society like North Korea, the West often writes off these kinds of stories. “They’re nuts,” you can almost hear a few desk officers in Foggy Bottom exclaim as they throw their hands in the air, “What are we supposed to do with this?”

But sooner or later during the Obama administration, the West will sit down with North Korea. The temptation is often to focus only on the nuclear issue, because it is obviously the most pressing concern for American national security. However, it’s critical that Western negotiators engage Pyongyang on human rights as well — if nothing else (and here’ s the cynic in me), asking hard questions about Mr. Pak’s disappearance creates diplomatic openings on other fronts, and will create incentives for the North Koreans to give ground elsewhere. And if we’re lucky, raising the issue might just protect Mr. Pak’s successor, too.

Nowruz is Iran’s new year, celebrated every spring. You may recall that last year, President Obama scored a ton of points from just about all quarters by sending this personalized Nowruz video message directed straight at Iran’s people. It was a great move that bypassed any formal communication with the mullahs in Tehran and successfully engaged Iranians on a personal level. From last year’s video:

You, too, have a choice.  The United States wants the Islamic Republic of Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations.  You have that right — but it comes with real responsibilities, and that place cannot be reached through terror or arms, but rather through peaceful actions that demonstrate the true greatness of the Iranian people and civilization.  And the measure of that greatness is not the capacity to destroy, it is your demonstrated ability to build and create.

This year’s Nowruz (#1389 if you’re scoring by the Persian calendar) takes place on March 20th. And suffice it to say that some things have changed since then: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stole an election last June from Mir Hossein Mousavi, which triggered millions-strong, largely peaceful (on the civilian side, anyway) demonstrations in Tehran over several weeks. The mullahs actually remain fairly divided lot, but since the Revolutionary Guards hold the balance of power in Iran, the status quo will reign for the time being. However, the protests continue to flare up, but with diminishing strength, on every subsequent public holiday or event. Their potency has been contained in large part because the Ayatollah learned the importance of crushing momentum from the country’s experience in 1979.

This raises the question: After a tumultuous year in American-Iranian “relations” that has seen the Obama administration change tack from guarded optimism of dialogue to renewed talk of targeted sanctions, what (if anything) will the administration do this Nowruz? With Tehran’s crackdown on social media and internet freedom, it might be more difficult to get a similarly successful message through. But it’s worth a try, given the negligible price of recording a three-minute message from the Oval Office.

If he does record something, part of the president’s Nowruz goodwill message to Iranians should focus on expanding Internet access in Iran, which began in earnest earlier this month when the White House lifted restrictions for the first time on U.S. companies exporting online software like chat and data-sharing programs. That’s an incredibly important step, and has been generally described as a win-win-win for Iranians, companies and American diplomatic efforts. But lifting restrictions is just one side of the equation — actively promoting this kind of software in Iran should follow next.

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/arasmus/ / CC BY 2.0

President Obama gave away his $1.4 million Nobel Peace Prize award yesterday, and where national security is concerned, he literally put his money where his mouth is.

The largest donation—$250,000—was given to Fisher House, an organization that builds “comfort homes” on the grounds of major U.S. military installations that allow service members’ families “to be close to a loved one at the most stressful times—during the hospitalization for an unexpected illness, disease, or injury.”  It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that President Obama would choose a charity like Fisher House, given the First Lady’s focus on the cause since the beginning of her husband’s presidency.  And with America’s military facing unprecedented strains, every drop in the bucket helps.

The president also gave $100,000 to AfriCare, which promotes health, food security, and access to water in Africa.  This donation mirrors Obama’s long-standing efforts to alleviate poverty in Africa, which dates back to his days in the Senate when he offered the 2007 Global Poverty Act that aims to cut the number of people living on a dollar a day in half by 2015.

Finally, Obama dropped 100 large on the Central Asia Institute, whose story is chronicled in the book “Three Cups of Tea.”  I wasn’t a huge fan of the book’s style, per se, but the CAI’s work is remarkable in and of itself, and it certainly deserves every penny for carrying out such an important mission of educating girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The donations are very embodiment of the notion that American national security policy is about more than the blunt instrument of military force (an idea most recently forwarded by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mullen).  When force is used, it should be done in a careful and judicious manner that accounts for the extended effects on our fighting men and women.

If you supported the Obama administration on this one, it couldn’t have turned out any better.

Back in September, the White House decided to swap missile defense programs. Out was a ground-based system in Eastern Europe that depended on a stationary missile battery and radar station in Poland and the Czech Republic, respectively. It was geared towards a long-range ballistic missile threat, and was over cost, over schedule, and under-performing to boot.

Conservatives howled that the White House was “abandoning its Eastern European allies” to a salivating Russia. Or was it a salivating Iran? Either way, conservatives were all worked up in a tizzy that, despite our mutual-defense pact with Poland and the Czech Republic, surely we were doing irreparable  damage to the NATO alliance.

In the Eastern European system’s place, the Obama administration (with unanimous support from the Joint Chiefs) decided to deploy a sea-based system that was designed to counter a short-to-medium Iranian ballistic missile threat because it had higher technical capabilities and could be deployed more rapidly. Part of the White House’s justification was a new intelligence estimate that said Iran was focused on its short-to-medium range missiles.

So, six months on, how’s that workin’ out for you?

It appears the White House may have—gasp—known what it was doing. I’m a day or so behind on this, but the Wall Street Journal reported this week that … wait for it … Iran has in fact started production of the Nasr1, a highly accurate short range cruise missile:

Iran said it has started a new production line of highly accurate, short-range cruise missiles, which would add a new element to the country’s arsenal.

Gen. Ahmad Vahidi told Iranian state TV Sunday that the cruise missile, called Nasr 1, would be capable of destroying targets up to 3,000 tons in size.

The minister said the missile can be fired from ground-based launchers as well as ships, but would eventually be modified to be fired from helicopters and submarines.

I’m curious as to how a cruise missile is fired from a helicopter, but I digress. The point is that the Obama has matched the current threat with appropriate, functioning, defensive capability. Game over!

And how about that abandonment? Here’s Eugeniusz Smolar, the director of the Center for International Relations in Warsaw, who said to the Guardian adopting the Obama administration’s approach was an easy call for Poland:

“This [new] proposal is much more Europe oriented because the new system is to deal more with the medium- and short-range threats, and this is exactly what Poland has been seeking,” Smolar said.

He added that the new plan is also “more NATO oriented, which is good, because it means there will be much less tension among the allies who have been complaining that Poland has been doing its own agreement with the U.S. outside of NATO.”

The following is an excerpt from Elbert Ventura’s review of Peter Richardson’s A Bomb in Every Issue in the newest issue of Democracy journal:

Flipping through The New York Times on the morning of February 16, 1966, a reader would have come across a startling photo: a stern-faced soldier, standing against a pitch-black backdrop, crowned by the bold declaration “I quit!” The soldier was Donald Duncan, a decorated Green Beret who had just returned from Vietnam. The small print announced Duncan’s opposition to the war after an 18-month tour. “I couldn’t kid myself any longer that my country was acting rationally, or even morally,” he said. But the photo wasn’t telling his story. It was selling it–it appeared in a full-page ad promoting the newest scoop fromRamparts magazine.

That wasn’t the first, and was hardly the last, of the Bay Area-based monthly’s provocations. In its brief and glorious heyday during the late 1960s, Ramparts produced a succession of images and stories that jumped out of newsstands and shook readers by the shoulders: four hands holding aloft burning draft cards; a portrait of Black Panther Huey P. Newton behind bars; an exhortation for more student uprisings and “two, three, many Columbias”; an all-American tyke holding the Viet Cong flag under the headline, “Alienation is when your country is at war and you want the other side to win.”

The magazine bloomed during a fertile period for radical media. Underground newspapers and leftist journals–the Berkeley Barb, the Los Angeles Free Press, Viet-Report, Rat–sprouted like wildflowers in the 1960s. But none of them were as big, as brash, or as influential asRamparts. This was no austere newsletter that took pride in its obscurity. Its covers were as eye-catching and inventive as anything mainstream publishing produced. Ramparts was unrepentantly glossy, filled with ads (a no-no for some on the left), groundbreaking design, and a pop savvy that tempered the sting of its incisive critique. Warren Hinckle, the executive editor, proudly wrote of the influential Ramparts style: “[B]y the late 1960s one could line up Evergreen Review, Harper’s, Atlantic, New Yorkmagazine, Esquire and Ramparts and be unable to tell the chicken from the egg.” By aping the look of the corporate media it mercilessly hammered, the magazine gave a sheen of mainstream legitimacy to radical ideas.

Considering that an entire continent’s worth of trees has been felled commemorating the ‘60s, it is something of a surprise that a proper history of Ramparts has never been published. Peter Richardson’s A Bomb In Every Issue: How the Short Unruly Life of Ramparts Magazine Changed America redresses that oversight. The editorial director of PoliPointPress, a publisher of progressive books, and author of a book on 1960s Nation editor Carey McWilliams, Richardson is steeped in the world of leftist ideas and journalism, and he ascribes an autobiographical dimension to his interest, noting that he grew up in the Bay Area and was marked at an early age by the very milieu that gave rise to Ramparts.

Richardson’s book offers a breezy, blow-by-blow account of the magazine’s short-lived existence. If anything, for those hungering for such a history, it might be a little too brisk–at a mere 227 pages including endnotes, the book whets one’s appetite for a longer, more immersive chronicle, not to mention an anthology of Ramparts’ best. But what’s here is choice. Relying heavily on two autobiographies by Ramparts editors–David Horowitz’s Radical Son and Hinckle’s If You Have a Lemon, Make Lemonade,, a gonzo memoir that’s due for rediscovery–Richardson also includes material from recent interviews with many of the magazine’s principals to put in perspective its unlikely achievements.

Smart enough to get out of the way of a story that needs no embellishing, Richardson fills in the backdrop with convincing color, placing Rampartsfirmly in its unique historical moment. The dramatis personae is a writer’s dream: eccentric millionaires, Berkeley radicals, Black Panthers, a dipsomaniac editor. Richardson is a lucid and even clever writer (a nice touch: lyrics from “The Star Spangled Banner” are used as chapter titles, a nod to Ramparts’ provenance). “If 1968 was the year America had a nervous breakdown, Ramparts was its most reliable fever chart,” writes Richardson. (The chapter is aptly titled “Bombs Bursting in Air.”) The line sums up Ramparts’ importance in the story of American journalism. In the postwar era’s most tumultuous decade, the magazine became the scrapbook of the zeitgeist. Richardson strains to make a case for Ramparts’–and his project’s–relevance to today, but he need not try so hard. The magazine’s singular brilliance and influence on its time more than qualify it for remembrance.

Read the rest at Democracy.

Sarah Holewinski and Jim Morin–two of my friends through the Truman National Security Project –have an excellent op-ed in today’s Christian Science Monitor on a issue that may haunt and confuse many Americans. First, Holewinski and Morin restate something that may still be missed in the public debate–that our forces are primarily in Afghanistan to protect Afghan civilians from the Taliban, not to fight the Taliban directly. This then begs a question Holewinski and Morin ask–if our forces are primarily concerned with protecting Afghans from the Taliban, does that mean more of our guys will die as a consequence?  Here’s their take:

Military families back home want to know: Are troops walking into hell with one hand tied behind their backs? Are civilian lives being spared in exchange for military ones?

The answer to both questions is no.  […]

Protecting the population isn’t political correctness; it’s a vital military objective and a distinct advantage over an enemy that uses civilians as shields. The drop in civilian casualties is a mark of success.

Allied troop fatalities have meanwhile increased, but efforts to spare civilians are not the cause. Rather, troops are fighting the insurgents where they live – as in Marjah. Taking on the Taliban requires taking that risk. American and allied forces may be walking into hell, but given the right strategy and purpose, they remain free to fight effectively. […]

Combat is violent, frightening, and confusing, and troops on the ground have both the instinct – and the right – to protect themselves. The critical role for commanders is to convey the lesson taught by the US Army’s Counterinsurgency Field Manual, drafted under Gen. David Petraeus: “Sometimes the more you protect your force, the less secure you may be.”

Military tactics are always balanced against strategic objectives, force protection, and humanitarian imperatives. In Afghanistan, international forces have had more than eight years to figure out what hasn’t worked and what will. The new emphasis on civilian protection is a welcome move toward striking the right balance.

In the Army there is a saying, “Mission First, Soldiers Always.” Safeguarding civilians and taking care of soldiers are not mutually exclusive. We owe our troops as much training, operational guidance, and moral certainty as modern war will allow.

This issue highlights how policy can be distorted and create bad political optics.  This is a nagging problem with the Afghanistan debate.  For example, the public discourse on President Obama’s decision on the war centered on two issues: how many troops, and the right’s false charge that he was “dithering” on what to do.  In that regard, the White House let the debate get away from it because, frankly, thousands of troop numbers grabs headlines in ways that strategy discussions don’t.

So, progressives should heed this op-ed and use it to push back when charges come–from either the left or right–that our troops are dying because we’re allegedly more concerned with Afghans.  There will be casualties, of course, but we have to understand that Afghan casualties vs. American casualties aren’t a zero-sum game.

Everyone knows that America’s attempt to implant democracy in Iraq was a fool’s errand. Everyone, that is, but the Iraqi people.

Stubbornly defying terrorist bombings and official incompetence, they turned out in force to vote in national elections over the weekend. Although the outcome isn’t yet known, the elections confirmed Iraq’s status as the Middle East’s most important, if precarious, experiment in democracy.

The process hasn’t been pretty, but there’s no denying that something like a normal, pluralistic politics is emerging in a society brutalized by a sadistic tyrant and scarred by the sectarian violence that followed the U.S. invasion. The big question now is whether Iraqis will continue along the path of power-sharing and representative government, or give up on democracy and opt for some form of authoritarian rule, which is the norm in their neighborhood.

It’s easy to be pessimistic about Iraq, so let’s start with the positive side of the ledger. First, al Qaeda has been defeated. Though it still perpetrates atrocities against Iraqi civilians, it has scant popular support and cannot stand up to Iraq’s army and police. Sectarian strife also has subsided, at least for the moment; the Economist reports that civilian casualties are at a six-year low.

Second, politics is becoming less sectarian as communal groups splinter and forge cross-cutting alliances. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has broken with the main Shia groups, which failed to field their own candidate for his post. Also expected to do well is former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a nationalist whose coalition includes Shia and Sunnis. In the north, a reform movement called “Change” has broken with the two dominant Kurdish parties on the issue of local political corruption. And in pointed contrast to Iran, Iraq’s Shia clerical establishment stays out of politics.

On the other side of the ledger, Iraq’s emerging political order faces several enormous challenges. One is a fatal combination of governmental weakness and corruption. The central government still cannot supply basic infrastructure, including electricity. Rampant bribery and cronyism are giving democracy a bad name and feeding popular sentiment for strongman rule. It’s not hard to imagine Iraq moving toward a “soft authoritarianism” like Egypt’s or perhaps the even more stifling models of Syria or Saudi Arabia.

The Iraqi economy is in shambles. Unemployment is pervasive and private industry is weak; government is the employer of first and last resort in Iraq. Although the country has enormous oil reserves, there’s a real danger it could use them to foster dependence on state subsidies rather than private sector work.

Finally, there’s the question of what happens when U.S. troops are no longer around to backstop Iraq’s political evolution. Under the Status of Forces Agreement signed by the Bush administration and Baghdad, all U.S. forces must be out by the end of 2011. As Peter Beinart warns, this deadline may not allow enough time for the consolidation of democracy in Iraq. The United States plays a quiet but vital role in mediating sectarian conflicts and helping Iraqis set up nonpartisan governing institutions. In our absence, civil war could flare up again, Iran might escalate its internal interference in Iraqi affairs, or there could be a military coup in reaction to public anger over the chaos and incompetence of civilian government.

Of course, the United States cannot unilaterally change the Status of Forces Agreement. But Obama should be vigilant and open to a request from the Iraqi government to do so should that become necessary. We have come too far, at enormous expense to both Iraqis and Americans, to give up now on Iraq’s struggles to build a decent government that rules by popular consent.

Iraq is having a major election on Sunday. No way, really? Yup, really. The leader of the winning coalition gets to be prime minister even. Suffice it to say, I’m pretty sure this one has slipped under the radar for most Americans. My quick and informal poll of friends — “Are you aware that Iraq is going to elect a new prime minister on Sunday?” — drew a mix of blank stares and disbelief. Gone are the days of George W. Bush’s PR blitz, where the ex-prez’s attempts to build public support for his war hung on selling the country on wistfully wrapped, grandiose concepts of liberty and freedom.

This time around, the Obama administration has opted for a more low-key approach. Democracies aren’t built overnight, a lesson the Bush folks probably knew, but since they had staked so much political capital to a quick victory and transition in Iraq, they couldn’t see the forest for the trees. The reality is that this election is more important than the last one, and the next one will be more important than this weekend’s. The mere act of holding elections is of course highly significant, but they must continually confirm the growth and strength of state institutions to truly build a democracy. That’s what this election is really about — how stable is Iraq?

So who’s going to win, and what issues are Iraqis concerned with? Man, if I could answer either of those with granularity, I could probably figure out how to make a lot of money with it. For starters, click here for a guide to all the different coalitions. Current polling predicts that incumbent PM Nouri al-Maliki’s coalition will win 30 percent of parliamentary seats, ex-PM Ayad Allawi’s (a Shia, running with a Sunni and secular Shia on a national unity coaition) bloc will take 22 percent, and the Iraqi National Alliance (a conservative Shia group) will get 17. But this doesn’t necessarily determine the “winner” because all the main groups will have to form a governing majority by reaching out to some of the millions of minority blocs in a coalition-of-the-coalitions government. In other words, Allawi might become prime minister if he can form a bigger coalition alliance with a few critical minority groups.

“Issues” in Iraq don’t carry — at least for now — the same weight and implications they do as in Western democratic politics. Iraqis aren’t going to bicker about abortion language in a health care bill in Baghdad, for example. Rather, Iraqi politicians are still debating the first two levels on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and wants: basic security, public services, and the like.

Which is why incumbent PM Nouri al-Maliki has named his coalition “State of Law,” which is of course designed to appeal to those who desire security. It’s also why there has been an uptick in attacks across Iraq over the last few months, as various groups try to disprove al-Maliki’s claim that he has the upper hand in the security situation.

I think we’ll really know how far Iraqi democracy has come based on sectarian voting patterns. Are Shias just voting for other Shias? Sunnis for Sunnis? Kurds for Kurds? We’ll know that democracy has really come to Iraq when a Shia will vote for a Sunni based on issues, not patronage. But since the issues are still so rudimentary, sectarianism still probably carries the day.

Finally, the post-election period will be the most critical. How easy will it be to form a governing majority? Will there be a peaceful transfer of power? How bad is sectarian violence? These questions all hinge on one another, I’m afraid. There may be calls for the U.S. to extend its presence in Iraq if the post-election period is really messy. But as I’ve written here, that’s a lot tougher than it might seem.

So pay attention, America — Iraq still deserves your attention.