Center for a New American Security

Veteran Washington Post intelligence reporter Walter Pincus goes wading through the Wikileaks cables and discovers something that lends support to a post I wrote last week:

Among additional State Department cables released over the past week and a half by the anti-secrecy Web site WikiLeaks, the handful from Cairo show that U.S. diplomats for years have been aware of Mubarak's views and Egypt's problems. They also show the limited impact that U.S. diplomacy can have on a country when its leader, even a close ally, refuses to deal with what Washington perceives as legitimate failures of its government.

In short, it was relatively easy to predict the trainwreck on the horizon. It was difficult, by contrast, to use what leverage the United States had over Egypt to avert the disaster.

In another article in today's paper, meanwhile, Pincus* talks about what ISAF sees as the logical Taliban strategy this spring:

When Taliban leaders return from Pakistan this spring to begin their annual offensive in Afghanistan, a senior U.S. commander believes they will undertake a major assassination campaign against local and tribal Afghan leaders and others who in recent months have begun cooperating with government officials and participating in the peace process.

The reason: While Taliban leaders have used the winter to withdraw to Pakistan to rearm and retrain their forces, U.S. and coalition forces have destroyed hidden support bases, carried out Special Forces raids on those Taliban leaders remaining in Afghanistan and deployed 110,000 more troops than there were last year, 70,000 of them Afghans.

Ahmed Hashim once coined the phrase "infrastructural takedown" to describe when insurgents do this. Ahmed was thinking, originally, of the Irish Republican Army from 1919 to 1921 and the way in which it went after British civil servants: mailmen, clerks, police -- anyone who enabled British rule. Ahmed started thinking hard about it once he started finding Tim Pat Coogan's books on Sunni insurgents in Iraq.

*Pincus is, what, 78 now? Can anyone over there in the Post's newsroom keep up with that guy? (Fun fact: Pincus finished law school a few years back, graduating at the age of 68.)

Rep. Peter King wonders whose side Eric Holder is on with respect to the investigation into alleged torture conducted by our intelligence agencies. That's all fine and good, and I am glad Rep. King is so tough on Islamist terrorism, but I imagine there are those in the United Kingdom who wonder whose side King was on in the 1980s when he shamelessly carried the PIRA's water.

"You will have thousands of lives that will be lost, and the blood will be on Eric Holder's hands," he said.

Civilians killed during The Troubles (1968-1998): 1,857 (and an additional 705 from an army currently fighting alongside U.S. Marines in Helmand Province, Afghanistan)

Fouad Ajami, one of the earliest and most strident backers of the Iraq War, has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Iraq entitled 'No Surrender.' That title -- and the op-ed -- will no doubt appeal to many regular readers of the Wall Street Journal op-ed page, but the words remind Abu Muqawama of the old football chant, and that gets him thinking about how the Irish insurgency of 1966-1998 ended 10 years ago this week. Did it end in decisive victory? Did it end with the 'terrorist' leaders killed and defeated?

Hell no. It ended with the IRA's statements practically written for them at 10 Downing Street. (Who knew that P O'Neill was actually A Blair?) This kind of collusion will no doubt disappoint hard-liners on both sides, but you know what? That is how bloody insurgencies sometimes end.

Abu Muqawama isn't even going to get into the heart of Ajami's op-ed -- the predictable slandering of the State Department, the even more predictable and uncritical love letter to the U.S. military -- because it's not worth it. But there's a lesson in the British experience in Northern Ireland for both sides. On the one hand, hand-wringers on the left shouldn't necessarily fret about the shady deals we're making with sectarian leaders on both sides of the Sunni-Shia divide in Iraq. These deals may be ugly, and they may come back to haunt us. But if you think it's all peace and love between Protestants and Catholics in Belfast these days, you're crazy. What's important is that the days of open warfare are over. We may have to deal with sectarian tension and violence for quite some time in Baghdad too.

And for those of you on the right who consider anything less than 'total victory' -- whatever that is -- to be for the weak-kneed, there's a lesson for you too: Martin McGuinness has the blood of British soldiers on his hands. But do you know how he keeps himself busy these days? Opening IKEA stories with Ian bleeping Paisley. And that suits most people just fine. Sometimes you can strike deals with your enemies, and that's crucial in wars you can't kill your way out of. So forget all that 'No Surrender' crap and get serious.