September 11, eight years ago, a sunny Tuesday morning whose routine was shattered by a series of coordinated suicide attacks on our country that would go on to claim the lives of 2,974 innocent civilians and change New York City's skyline forever. Eight years have past since that fateful day and today we find ourselves still engaged in world-spanning struggle that has further claimed the lives more American combat troops, and diplomatic personnel. Much has changed. This September 11 anniversary is different from the rest, in that it is the first in which George W. Bush is no longer President of the United States. In January of this year, Barack Obama was sworn into the office and has since had to tackle not only the wars resultant from the attacks, but also a global economic meltdown not seen in decades. Under this new President, the US has recommitted to Afghanistan, where the 9/11 attacks were conceived. Things however are not going well.

Since 2001, when we toppled the Taliban and installed the government of Hamid Karzai, our mismanagement and lack of focus on the country allowed the Taliban to return, stronger than ever, and set up cells throughout the country. Iraq, a war sold to us on the idea that in a post-9/11 world we could no longer allow a dictator like Saddam Hussein to remain in power manufacturing weapons of mass destruction that could make their way to terrorists, has stabilized somewhat. Most of the reasons given for the conflict, however, turned out not to have been right. In short, mistakes have been made even as we've had a few successes in the capture or death of men directly connected to the 9/11 attacks, among these Ramzi bin al Shibh and Khalid Sheik Muhammed. Osama bin Laden, and Ayman Al-Zawahiri, however, remain at large and despite 8 years of looking for them, we are no closer to finding them.

Since the 9/11 attacks, 4343 American soldiers have died in Iraq, along with UK 179; Italy, 33; Ukraine, 18; Poland, 21; Bulgaria, 13; Spain, 11; Denmark, 7; El Salvador, 5; Slovakia, 4; Latvia and Georgia, 3 each; Estonia, Netherlands, Thailand and Romania, 2 each; and Australia, Hungary, Kazakhstan and South Korea, 1 each.

In Afghanistan, 726 American soldiers have lost their lives, most coming in the last few years as the Taliban insurgency has gained strength. Additionally, the US military also lists a total of 69 more American military deaths in Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba; Djibouti; Eritrea; Ethiopia; Jordan; Kenya; Kyrgyzstan; Philippines; Seychelles; Sudan; Tajikistan; Turkey; and Yemen. The most recent article I could find mentioning US ally deaths, puts the tally at Great Britain 110, Canada 85, Germany 25, and the Netherlands 16.

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In the coming days we'll find out much more about this attack, it's planning and execution and the identity of those responsible. What is clear, so far, is that the group(s) who carried out these attacks seem to have drawn heavily from previous al Qaeda operations, whose calling card has been the targeting of a country's commercial/financial centers, transportation links, and tourism industry. So far these attacks appear to have been merely inspired, and not conducted by al Qaeda. Given their scope and sophistication, no doubt many will look eventually at Pakistan. Currently, media reports indicate that a previously unknown terrorist group, Deccan Mujahideen, has taken responsibility for the attack. The attacks are currently ongoing, as terrorists have taken hostages in both the elite Taj Mahal and Oberoi (Trident) hotels.

Based on reports from FoxNews, Pollster.com and FoxNews I think it is safe to say that Sen. Barack Obama has won the Presidency of the United States.

Given the map so far, and my prediction that Obama will win California, Washington and Oregon, he already has 277 electoral votes, or more than enough to win the presidential contest.

Sen. McCain fought hard, but ultimately it was not enough.

Now is the time to move away from the partisanship and look toward uniting the country to address the myriad of problems we face. As Abraham Lincoln said at a time of crisis more than 100 yrs ago, United We Stand, Divided We Fall.

Read More...

It's been a week since the release of Google Chrome, which I've been using on and off. At first, I loved the design, and its speed in loading pages, but was put off by the lack of add-ons to make it more useful in my everyday surfing. Additionally, as I noted in my last post, the way it handled Flash was problematic, as it kept freezing on me on sites like Gmail, Youtube, and Hulu. Although there's still no work around to this last problem, some hard working bloggers have figured out ways in which to make Chrome more productive.

One of the first things I missed while using Chrome was the Google Toolbar. This, since like most, I use the toolbar tools on every day surfing, from searching through Google News, to mapping on Google Maps, and using Google Site Search. Additionally, I'm an avid user of both Google Reader and Google Notebook, and their respective clipping tools. As many of you may have noticed, on the left sidebar in this blog I've added a section called "Articles of Interest." These articles are shared Google Reader Notes, which I've shared from the assortment of blogs and news sites I follow daily. In that section, I can also clip articles from news websites as I surf, thanks to the Reader Notes bookmarklet. It's a useful tool, primarily because it allows me to share articles I consider noteworthy, or interesting with everyone who reads this blog, while also allowing me to comment on them as I share them. In short, it becomes a sort of mini-blog where you can gain an insight into my thinking on issues on which I may not have full posts on here.

Additionally, and perhaps more important for my reading and research habits, not having the Notebook clipping tool was very frustrating when using Google Notebook. This service, is similar to Reader, but rather than following blogs via RSS feeds, it allows me to surf and clip articles for future posts on this blog, file them according to topic and then print them as a reading package, which I can then highlight at will prior to writing a post. Though they sound somewhat similar, the services are tailored to different needs. So, when I first used Chrome, not having either tool made my surfing experience very unsatisfying, as I had to open firefox and copy paste links from Chrome in order to use the Google Notebook's note clipping add-on. That, however, will no longer be necessary.

To continue reading this post, please click here.

Something is wrong with TPM, and every time I tried to submit my post, it told me that the connection had failed. I resubmitted the post twice, hence the triple post. Sorry about that.

Following Prof. Nexon's example, I am posting this here, mostly because I think more than anything, it demonstrates just how low our politics have sunk. I just watched Sen. McCain's speech, and the Republican convention in general, and one of the main points he tried to emphasize was that of, as he put it, "Country First." After watching this video, can anyone seriously argue that these pundits are putting anything other than their political party first? [Video embedded at my blog]

To be sure, this is not only a Republican disease, and during the primary campaign we saw Democratic pundits arguing for race/gender politics depending on who their preferred candidate was. The point is, apart from a fake news program like the Daily Show, why are network anchors not calling these pundits on their hypocrisy. That, to me would be Must See TV.

I've argued before that one of the most unforgivable things this administration did after 9/11 was to put politics ahead of our security. Apparently, even John McCain, when arguing for the surge expressed his frustration over this administration's practices to Bob Woodward, by stating "Everything is f'ing spin!" I'm not the first person to criticize this administration for this, and probably won't be the last, given that during some of our biggest challenges, including Iraq, they were more interested in how to spin it, than in actually solving the problems we faced.

It gives me great hope that Senator McCain saw this back then, even as I sometimes now wish that the McCain of 2000 was running for President again. Still, after watching the Republican convention, I could not help but think that given that the Republican party is asking for four more years in the executive branch, they failed to articulate how they would differ from the current administration, except to say that Sen. McCain was running, and not George W. Bush.

To continue reading this post (and to view the video), please click here.

The wait is over. Google has just released Chrome. To download the Google Chrome browser, please click here. Like almost all things Google, Chrome is being released as a beta. I will begin testing it soon and will update this post with my take on the new browser.

My Initial Reaction

[Original article includes screenshots of Google Chrome]

Google Chrome lives up to the hype. Not only do pages load considerably faster than in Opera 9.5, Safari 3.12, Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox 3 but, at least in my computer, a new Chrome session opens much faster as well. It also uses a lot less memory when running. Firefox 3 with two tabs open consumes 100,000k of memory, Chrome uses only 30,000k.

I like the speed dial feature, which displays your most visited web pages for easy convenience upon browser start-up and when you open a new tab. It also includes a side bar of your most recently bookmarked and searched items, which makes it extremely user friendly.

The incognito window is awesome, not only do you know which window it is, but once you are done using it, there is no discernible trace of where you have been. How do you know? Well, it opens as a new window (as opposed to a tab)and loads in a darker shade of blue. Additionally, you not only see a spy in the corner of the navigation bar, but upon loading, a message alerts you that you are in fact in incognito mode.

To continue reading, please click here.

The wait is over. Google has just released Chrome. To download the Google Chrome browser, please click here. Like almost all things Google, Chrome is being released as a beta. I will begin testing it soon and will update this post with my take on the new browser.

My Initial Reaction

[Original article includes screenshots of Google Chrome]

Google Chrome lives up to the hype. Not only do pages load considerably faster than in Opera 9.5, Safari 3.12, Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox 3 but, at least in my computer, a new Chrome session opens much faster as well. It also uses a lot less memory when running. Firefox 3 with two tabs open consumes 100,000k of memory, Chrome uses only 30,000k.

I like the speed dial feature, which displays your most visited web pages for easy convenience upon browser start-up and when you open a new tab. It also includes a side bar of your most recently bookmarked and searched items, which makes it extremely user friendly.

The incognito window is awesome, not only do you know which window it is, but once you are done using it, there is no discernible trace of where you have been. How do you know? Well, it opens as a new window (as opposed to a tab)and loads in a darker shade of blue. Additionally, you not only see a spy in the corner of the navigation bar, but upon loading, a message alerts you that you are in fact in incognito mode.

To continue reading, please click here.

The wait is over. Google has just released Chrome. To download the Google Chrome browser, please click here. Like almost all things Google, Chrome is being released as a beta. I will begin testing it soon and will update this post with my take on the new browser.

My Initial Reaction

[Original article includes screenshots of Google Chrome]

Google Chrome lives up to the hype. Not only do pages load considerably faster than in Opera 9.5, Safari 3.12, Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox 3 but, at least in my computer, a new Chrome session opens much faster as well. It also uses a lot less memory when running. Firefox 3 with two tabs open consumes 100,000k of memory, Chrome uses only 30,000k.

I like the speed dial feature, which displays your most visited web pages for easy convenience upon browser start-up and when you open a new tab. It also includes a side bar of your most recently bookmarked and searched items, which makes it extremely user friendly.

The incognito window is awesome, not only do you know which window it is, but once you are done using it, there is no discernible trace of where you have been. How do you know? Well, it opens as a new window (as opposed to a tab)and loads in a darker shade of blue. Additionally, you not only see a spy in the corner of the navigation bar, but upon loading, a message alerts you that you are in fact in incognito mode.

To continue reading, please click here.

NN has just announced that Sen. Barack Obama has picked Sen. Joe Biden has his running mate. As I noted earlier this year, right after the Democratic contest in Iowa

It is a sad reflection on the American electorate, particularly on the democratic side, that the most qualified candidates to be president have been the ones who were eliminated first from the presidential contest (Biden, Dodd, Richardson). To the credit of Republicans, they at least seem to value experience much more as the resurgence of Senator John McCain demonstrates. The Republican race is wide open, but it is not farfetched to think that Senator McCain will emerge as their presidential candidate. If so, Democrats will again be stuck in a race where they will have to make up for their national security deficit to a popular and moderate republican candidate that can appeal to "Reagan democrats" and Independents while also pulling in the support of his own party. After Senator Biden, Senator McCain is the most qualified person running for President, and one whom I am looking at closely and may support depending on how the Democratic race pans out. This appears to be a change election, and qualifications don't seem to have mattered much. As I said earlier, I'm now leaning toward Senator Obama, however, this quasi-support is qualified on him choosing an experienced hand as his vice-presidential running mate giving us the change the electorate seems to want, with the wisdom of a steady and experience hand to guide it (my pick would be Sen. Biden).

As noted in that post, Joe Biden, thanks to his years of experience and recognized foreign affairs credentials addresses the major weakness, which has been exploited by the McCain campaign. Of all the candidates mentioned as being considered for the position, Sen. Biden addressed the biggest weakness in Senator Obama's campaign, even as he also highlights them. Biden, also has great rapport with blue collar workers, and unlike both candidates running for President, is not worth millions, and what's more, he still commutes daily from Delaware to Washington, DC. Additionally, Biden is respected in the senate and like John McCain has a reputation for reaching across the aisle. Apart from that, he is also a good attack dog, able to deliver an attack seamlessly and with humor.

To continue reading this post, please click here.

Ten days since the start of hostilities between Georgia and Russia over South Ossetia, and while Russian forces remain in the country, there are rumblings of Russian games in Ukraine. As I noted, along with Georgia, Ukraine's possible ascension into NATO is viewed as posing a direct threat to Russia's security. As such, Georgia was as much about sending the West a message, as it was about sending a message to the Yushchenko in Kiev.

According to NPR, and the BBC, there is a political crisis brewing in Ukraine involving rumors that Ukraine's current Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has withheld support for Georgia's government in the current crisis, as a means of positioning her party to receive support, financial and otherwise, from Moscow in the upcoming elections for President in 2010. Tymoshenko, who's on holiday has not yet commented on the accusations, but her party declared that these accusations meant nothing more than Yushchenko has begun his re-election campaign.

Steve Bandera at Kyiv Scoop, has a post on Ukraine's Crimea and the possibilities of Russia using a South Ossetia precedent in the region. Bandera tells us that unlike South Ossetia, Crimea is not an active war zone. However, he reports that betwen 20,000 and 25,000 Crimean residents have already been granted Russian citizenship and passports. He cites a Vice Admiral kozhin, the first commander of independent Ukraine’s Black Sea Fleet, who argues that:

in comparison to South Ossetia, Russia has completed about 50 to 60 percent of the groundwork in Crimea. He said that the Kremlin’s Crimea-based initiatives are systemic in nature and worked down to the nitty-gritty details: when Russia opens a school in Crimea, the event is not just about a school-opening: it’s a military event, a media event, an intelligence event, all geared towards creating “positive influence” in Crimea.

What's troubling about this report, is the fact that as noted by Bandera, the last time Crimean separatism reared its ugly head, it was solely through the efforts of then Russian President Boris Yeltsin, that a wider crisis was avoided in 1995. The main problem now, is that Yeltsin is no longer in control, nor Russia as weak as it was back then.

Adding to worries in Ukraine, are rumors that Russia has decided to punish the country for its support of Georgia during the South Ossetian crisis, by starting a trade war. This would mean that

Heavy industry in the country's eastern oblasts, including Rinat Akhmetov's SCM could be hard hit by shortfalls in deliveries of Russian coking coal.

However, as Levko at Foreign Notes argues, given that the eastern part of Ukraine would be more likely to support Russia, such a trade war would prove counter-productive to Russia's larger aims and hence this makes such an action on Russia's part less likely.

In this post, I also wanted to direct you to a post at New Kosova Report, which argues against the oft heard contention that South Ossetia is like Kosovo. Below is the key paragraph:

in the eyes of the Kosovars, as the Russian tanks roll towards Tbilisi, the parallels are more local. Georgia and Kosovo are both products of the disintegration of two superstates, USSR and Yugoslavia. Kosovo was a constitutional member of the Yugoslav superstate with the right to veto like other Yugoslav constitutional bodies; the provinces in the Caucasus were not. In Kosovo as in Georgia, it’s the neighboring regional power and dominant resulting country of one superstate – Serbia - attempting to establish control of its smaller neighbors through sheer imbalance of military power, and when that fails as it did after the disintegration of USSR, falling back on just a part of that territory similar to Serbia maneuvering to hold to northern Kosovo today or Krajina in Croatia...

The parallels with the Georgia situation of the attempt of using an ethnic minority inside the country - Kosovo Serbs – to carve up a part of the country is not missing on Kosovars.

If you would like to read the rest of this post, please click here.

The scene that started with the bomb that took Benazir Bhutto's life has now reached its final act. In my post on the subject, following Bhutto's assassination, I argued that her death not only destroyed Gen. Musharraf's only viable strategy for regaining some legitimacy for his government, but also displayed yet again how easily a well timed terrorist strike, could alter the political landscape of a country. This is not to say that Gen. Musharraf was not responsible for his own political troubles, he was, rather, I'm merely noting how easily it was for those who opposed him (particularly militant extremists) to destroy his chances to remain in charge of the country.

According to media reports, Gen. Musharraf's exit was negotiated by the US, the UK and Saudi Arabia. For some time now, since the election which gave the majority to the Pakistan People's Party and the Pakistan Muslim League, the leaders of the two parties, Ali Zardari (Bhutto's husband) and Nawaz Sharif have been negotiating on how to proceed. The Economist reports that Ali Zardari was reluctant to push for Gen. Musharraf's resignation and impeachment, but had to give way or risk losing Nawaz Sharif and his party from the coalition government. This, not because Zardari liked or wanted Musharraf to stay, but rather because as I noted in my post on the subject, following Bhutto's death, the removal of Musharraf, would leave Nawaz Sharif as the most powerful secular politician in the country. Even as negotiations proceeded for Musharraf to step down, it was Sharif who became an impediment to his ouster by opposing the granting of immunity to Musharraf. While this could be seen as a democratically elected leader standing up to a dictator's whim, it is not, as it had more to do with Sharif's desire to avenge the 7 years of forced exile that Musharraf condemned him to.

What eventually forced Sharif to concede on this point, was Saudi Arabia's intervention on Musharraf's behalf. The Saudi Chief of Intelligence arrived in Pakistan warning the coalition government that unless Gen. Musharraf was allowed to resign with dignity, Pakistan risked losing the generous oil subsidies from Saudi Arabia that have kept the economy afloat through the economic crisis, and which total more than $5 billion a year in deferred payments.

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The situation in the Caucasus is slowly deteriorating. First, Poland and the United States reached an agreement on the missile shield to include 10 interceptor rockets at a base in northern Poland, and seemingly in response, Russia's military pushed deeper into Georgian territory. Moreover, Russia also raised the ante by hinting that the US would have to choose, and soon, between what it refers to as its "Special Project" or issues which are more important to the US and the international community; mainly, Iran and North Korea. According to the AP, the US agreed in the deal with Poland, and in defiance of Russia's recent victory, to include a declaration that the US will aid Poland militarily in case of a threat from a third country, and will establish a permanent American base on Polish soil. The Czech Republic has already agreed to host a radar for the missile shield, and is currently only awaiting parliamentary approval. Given that Russia has threatened to take retaliatory steps against both countries if they participated in the US missile shield, the agreement ads fuel to an intensifying fire. In another sign of displeasure, Russia's Foreign Minister has canceled a planned trip to Warsaw that was scheduled for September. In this post, given the situation that is developing, we will first take a look at the best argument justifying Russia's actions (since as I noted in an earlier post, the view of Russia as evil is overly simplistic), and then move to discuss the regional impact of this crisis.

Perhaps the best argument for Russia's actions comes from George Friedman at Stratfor (please note that this is only an excerpt).

[Excerpt in the original]

Of course, now that this has happened, it is time to look at the reverberations it is likely to have in the region, besides the immediate parties to the conflict.

Armenia, Azerbaijan: Nagorno-Karabakh

Courtesy of Wikipedia

Given that in Georgia, Russia's intervention made the difference so thoroughly, both Azerbaijan and Armenia (who have fought over the status of this independent republic, despite it being officially part of Azerbaijan) have to worry about not angering Russia, or giving it any reason to pick a side in the dispute. Baku of course, being one third of the BTC pipeline, and hence part of the alternate energy corridor sponsored by the US to bypass Russia, now finds itself on the wrong side. The fact that Nagorno Karabakh, who like many other such regions like South Ossetia and Abkhazia, will be emboldened by the result in Georgia only adds an uncertain element to the mix.

If you want to continue reading this post, please click here.

Other countries discussed include Turkey, Moldova, Ukraine, the Baltic Republics, and Central Asia.

In a previous post, I noted the importance of the BTC pipeline to the US's plan to turn Georgia into a key energy corridor that bypasses Russian control, and highlighted this as a reason for the US pushing for Georgian accession into NATO. In this post, I wanted to refer you to a post by Jeff Kouba at Peace Like a River, which focuses on this very subject.

In his post, discussing the energy corridor, Jeff has two graphics, which I am including below, that will give you a better picture of why Georgia is so important to the US, and the European Union.

[Pictures of existing and proposed oil pipelines in Russia and Georgia to Europe in original post]

Here are a few excerpts from Jeff's post:

Georgia has been involved in a few attempts to circumvent Russia’s dominance of gas routes, and one of those is the proposed White Stream pipeline. This pipe would take Caspian gas to Europe without passing through Russia.

This would branch off the South Caucasus pipeline, which runs near the BTC pipeline. If Russia were to take control of the BTC pipeline, it would also control the South Caucasus pipeline, and hence could dictate the success or failure of the White Stream pipeline.

The Nabucco Pipeline is another proposal for bringing gas to Europe, without having it pass through Russian control. It would connect “the Caspian region, Middle East and Egypt via Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary with Austria and further on with the Central and Western European gas markets.”

In cooperation with Italy, Russia has countered with its own proposal, the South Stream Project. This project would augment the Blue Stream pipeline, and would take gas from Turkey through Bulgaria and Serbia to Hungary and Austria. Note that Ukraine is avoided.

Russia has been putting pressure on European nations to join its project, and not Nabucco. And, with success. Serbia, Hungary, Greece and Bulgaria have signed on.

It may not be a direct cause and effect, but at the very least it’s an interesting metaphor to look at the responses of these nations to Russia’s action in Georgia.

As I highlighted in another post, this is also why Steve LeVine at Oil and Glory argued that the big winner in all of this could be China, who is also building pipelines from Central Asia which would allow that region to reduce its reliance on Russia.

To continue reading this post, please click here.

I was going to include this in my original post, but decided to create a new one since the first is already quite lengthy and since including any new material there would not have highlighted it as much as I wanted to. This post looks at the question of who will emerge as the winners and losers in this conflict. One of the latter is obvious, Georgia, but there is a good deal of debate about who the winners are.

In my initial post, I noted how the US and EU's inability to step the Russian onslaught against Georgia, could achieve one of Russia's main objectives, mainly, getting Eastern European and Baltic states to rethink the power configuration in the region, and through that their pro-western policies. After all, the EU, the US and NATO may be good for business, but what will that matter when Russian tanks can march into your capital any time and with impunity?

The NY Times provides us with a pretty good example of how this could work. Already in Georgia, people are disillusioned with the American and European response. As one soldier put it,

“We killed as many of them as we could,” he said. “But where are our friends?”

Where is the United States? When is NATO coming?

The same sentiment is echoed by a major in the Georgian army who told the Times reporter

“Write exactly what I say,” he said. “Over the past few years, I lived in a democratic society. I was happy. And now America and the European Union are spitting on us.”

This in reference to what they perceive as the US abandoning their close ally Georgia in the fight against the Russian juggernaut.

This feeling, will no doubt be echoed in other former Soviet Republics, who even acknowledging Saakashvili's blame, will likely see that for all the talk about American support, Russia is still capable of exerting its power unilaterally and unabashedly. As I noted in that post, this has the potential to make many of them re-think their pro-western orientation.

Likewise, in that post, I also noted an argument put forth by Time's Zarakhovich who proposed that Russia, in attacking Georgia so massively could actually overplay its hand and hasten the very developments it is trying to prevent, mainly, that more of its former satellites move to join the EU or NATO. In short, Zarakhovic's main argument is that if Russia continues military operations beyond South Ossetia and into the rest of Georgia proper, it will remind its former satellites just why NATO protection is so important to them.

Along these lines, we also get a post from Joshua Foust at Registan who posits that Russia will be a loser in this conflict, and the Bush administration the big winner. Josh, like me, noted that Putin's direct engagement in this crisis not only undermined President Medvedev's authority but showed him for the puppet he is, hence unmasking the fact that Russia can no longer be considered even an authoritarian democracy, destroying much of whatever soft power it had left, and leaving it's hard power as the only option in achieving its ends. Joshua further argues,

A wannabe tsar ruling from the prime minister’s office might sound ominous, but it speaks to Russia’s tremendous political rot, which this conflict is highlighting. And that rot means it has little prospect of lasting for a long time (the moment Putin is out of the picture, it is difficult to imagine anything other than chaos).

Joshua contends that though the fighting will hurt Georgia, to assign it any more value would be to give Russia more power than it actually has. Joshua also favorably cites Steve LeVine, particularly his contention that China emerges as the long-term winner in all this.

To continue reading this post, please click here.