In the coming November elections I will not vote. Unlike other absentees, this will not be due to protest, lack of attractive alternatives, or (as is, regretfully, so common among Americans) apathy. I won't vote for the simple fact that I'm not an American citizen, and therefore have no voting rights. Why should this simple fact bother any of you? Maybe it should not. I think it should, however, because of another simple fact: just like many people around the world I will be significantly affected by the results of this election. Moreover, as a resident of the Middle East, my future prospects depend to a large extent on the American elections.

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The most important issue is coming up now, as our week is winding down, the one Michael Contarino raises in his last posting, namely regarding the role of morality in foreign policy. I could not agree more that the next president must work to restore the "moral credibility" of the United States.

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In yesterday's posts, Professor Ish-Shalom pointed out the dangers of extremists to their own countries. That's invaluable, as we often reduce things to the simple Manichaen dualism of "Us Good, Them Bad." What do we do when "they" become "us"?--or to use Walt Kelly's famous phrase from Pogo, "We have met the enemy and he is us." One of the many reasons that I admire Prof. Etzioni's Security First is the insistence on our own morality. That's the theme that Professor Contarino stressed in his fine post yesterday. I'd like to pick up on that with regard to the Muslim world.

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In a post today, Amitai Etzioni notes the dangerous credibility vacuum behind John McCain's tough rhetoric on Georgia - and the recklessness of expanding a security guarantee to countries which we cannot realistically defend.

McCain's words raise the question of how he would respond to a Russian grab for Georgia or Ukraine. Would he accept the humiliation of having our impotence exposed? Or would he shoot from the nuclear hip? Sarah Palin, apparently unread on the origins or consequences of World War One, said recently that Article Five would require that we defend our allies even if that meant war with Russia.

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Schwartz argues that America "always" puts freedom before peace [here]. Actually, as today's headlines show yet again, the Bush Administration is falling victim to its own propaganda. It is endangering vital U.S. interests in order to continue pretending that it is promoting democratization.

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Tonight, in his home in Jerusalem, Professor Zeev Sternhell--renowned scholar, vocal criticizer of Israel policy of settlements, and an admired teacher--was the target for a pipe-bomb set-up, probably by right-wing Jewish terrorists. Thankfully, Sternhell was injured only lightly. This internal terror act demonstrates that violence knows no restrictions, and that there is no insurance for a stable democracy.

In Security First Amitai Etzioni discusses two types of people: Warriors and Preachers, or put differently, Extremists and Moderates. The former are those who embrace violence to pursue their aims. The latter are those who eschew violence and use only peaceful means to achieve their aims. These categories extend across nations (and civilizations). Each nation--including democratic ones--has its own warriors and its own preachers, and the warriors only await to forcefully compel their own methods. Extended unjust war and occupation provides a good opportunity for warriors to implement their modus operandi. For example, during the war in Vietnam the United States suffered political and social violence at home, with events such as the Kent State massacre and Watergate.

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Thanks to Shuja Nawaz for his report from the border. As someone born in Lahore, I have a personal interest in Pakistan, and am saddened at the violence there. If we want to make changes, we have to do as he suggests. Work with local people. Help them with the basic necessities of their lives. Here, I am thinking of an analogy from missiology. In an earlier age, missionaries were sent to convert people. Build churches, baptize "the heathen". There was no thought to their lives, no thought to the foreignness of what was being imposed (there are no grapes in Indonesia, for example, and people eat rice instead of bread. How then were Indonesians to understand the Eucharist of bread and wine?). Now, we speak not of establishing the "church", but participating in "the reign of God", helping people to better their lives. That's precisely what we are not doing in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In his response to my original post in this series, Stephen Schwartz objects to my application of the term "narco-terrorism state" to Afghanistan. He claims that I either "misuse the term" or else "libel the government of Hamid Karzai." I let the facts speak for themselves.

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Michael Contarino correctly points out that in discussing democracy promotion, two issues can become entangled. One is what means should be employed. As I stated before, I am all in favor of democracy building by non-lethal means, via education, cultural exchanges, leadership training, fostering civil society projects, and much more. I do have an issue with using cruise missiles, bombers, and the Marines to build democracy.

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I am delighted to learn from one of the great specialists in the field, Shuja Nawaz, who is just back from the tribal areas in Pakistan next to the border with Afghanistan.

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Mr. Ish-Shalom uses the term "reality check" but it is clear to me that both he and Prof. Etzioni are far out of touch with reality. The latter admits to cognitive dissonance when he indicates that people told him, factitiously in the past, that Iraq was the wrong war, and Afghanistan the right war, but then admits that both wars have ceased to elicit major criticism from the two presidential candidates.

Iraq is stabilizing; now the debate is over whether the new, positive phase was brought about by "the surge," or by the inevitable alienation of ordinary Sunnis from Wahhabi jihadism, which I had predicted from the beginning. The latter was "the number one lesson from Iraq," and not anything derived from U.S. policy decisions.

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I just got back from a trip to the border region of Pakistan. We badly need to inject money directly into hands of tribals for projects they identify. In a meeting with 23 Maliks in North Waziristan they asked for help with irrigation, education, and health care. Basic needs. No leakage of aid en route to Beltway Bandits and their local ilk.
Also we need to moderate tribesmen now organizing their own forces to evict militants and "foreigners" (al qaeda) along the lines of the Iraqi Awakening movement.

Amitai Etzioni notes with clear-eyed regret that a stable Afghanistan will not be built by some tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of occupying foreign troops. Military force cannot resolve the deep political divisions of tribal Afghanistan. Like so many guerrilla fighters in so many lands, including earlier generations of Afghans, those who resist the foreign forces know that they win by not losing. An overstretched United States must reassess its objectives and scale back its goals from what we would like to do to what we actually can do. This is not an abandonment of Afghan democracy in principle, but it is a rather sobering recognition of the limits of American power and what we might realistically expect the future of Afghanistan to be.

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At the risk of trivializing the wonderful ending of Casablanca I would say that Professor Amitai Etzioni's last post might be the beginning of a beautiful friendship between his stand and mine. No one in his right mind would expect Iraq to be democratic soon, but no one in his right mind should abandon the hope to see Iraq democratic. This is the kind of middle ground between realism and idealism that I would willingly embrace.

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The critical phrase in Professor Piki Ish-Shalom's valuable posting is "That does not mean that we need to force democracy at gun point." He is surely right that the Neocons gave democracy promotion a bad name. I could not agree more that the ideal of democratization should not be abandoned. The problem, as his key sentence helps us to remember, is that the language traps us, because the phrase "democracy promotion" covers both coerced democratization (which is what regime change means, at least in the Neocon world) and non-lethal support of democratization.

I, like Professor Piki Ish-Shalom, am all in favor of promoting democracy by educational, persuasive means, and indicated how this may be done in Security First. It is the violent type of promotion that I object to.

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Amitai Etzioni serves us a succinct reality check. There are limits to what the U.S. can do in Afghanistan and Iraq and there are limits to what we can expect from the war. One troubling question is how the U.S. has found itself trapped in this situation. A second question is what it should do now. All this is even more important now as the American elections are approaching. However, I am sure that some of the other participants will take those questions head on, especially the second one. I wish to raise another issue that seems to me important. It seems that the neoconservative heritage will leave another victim in its wake: that of democracy promotion as an ideal, as a vision to aspire for.

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We are told all too often that the invasion of Iraq was the wrong war but that the war in Afghanistan is the right one. Indeed, both presidential candidates favor a surge of troops in Afghanistan. However, the attempt to impose a regime change on Afghanistan is failing, all the while causing more and more Afghan, American, and other casualties.

The main reason is that a conventional army is no match for guerrilla forces, especially when they can rely on a safe haven right across the border. The Taliban dress like civilians, are supplied by civilians, and are housed in civilian homes. When the U.S. attacks them, it inevitably ends up killing civilians, including women and children. The notion that if the U.S. used more ground forces, and less planes and artillery, there would be fewer casualties is a valid one--as far as the Afghans are concerned. But many more Americans and allied troops are going to be lost this way. Using airpower undermines the support of the war by the Afghans; using ground troops undermines the support of the war by America's allies, and soon--by Americans.

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This week at Cafe, we're talking foreign policy in a Book Club with Amitai Etzioni on his recent book Security First. What should the topmost priority of U.S. foreign policy be? (Hint: it's all in the title!) With a more specific focus on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the upcoming election, it should be a very interesting discussion. Weighing in are Shuja Nawaz, author of Crossed Swords: Pakistan, its Army, and the Wars Within, Stephen Schwartz, director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism, Piki Ish-Shalom, lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem , Michael Contarino, associate professor of political science at UNH, and Amir Hussain, associate professor at Loyola Marymount university. Join us!

Lila Shapiro graciously allowed us to extend Whatever It Takes week in the TPMCafé Book Club into the weekend. For me, it has been a fascinating discussion, and I'm grateful to Lila and Josh and TPM for having us; to Andy Rotherham, Alex Kotlowitz, and Amy Wilkins for their insightful posts; and to the commenters, for contributing their own stories and bits of wisdom, and for pressing us participants to hone and clarify our thinking.

I want to first take on Alex's important and somewhat disheartening question: Why don't we spend more money on our public schools and on early-childhood education, especially when there seems to be plenty of money around for Wall Street bailouts?

I'm in favor of more government funding of education, and I'm certainly in favor of more equitable funding. (I wrote a bit about it on Slate last week.) But I can also empathize with voters who resist spending more. It's a fact that federal government spending on education has risen sharply under President Bush, and I think voters can be forgiven, when they look at the statistics and the test scores, for feeling that they haven't got their money's worth.

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