One of the primary ways the attacks of September 11, 2001 were supposed to have changed the United States was by revealing to us our vulnerability within our own borders to terrorist attacks. But of course, we had seen many terrorist attacks before then.  

We had seen them throughout American history -- shootings and hijackings and bombings. The destruction of Pan Am flight 103 in 1988 remains an open wound today. The 1995 Bojinka plot of Ramzi Yousef and his uncle, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, to blow up 12 airliners en route to the United States and possibly kill as many as 4,000 people was a contributing factor leading to a major heightening of airport security by the Clinton Administration a year later.  The Oklahoma City bombing, also in 1995, is still regularly invoked as a sign of our vulnerability to domestic terrorists. Indeed, it was in 1995 that I first remember Richard Clarke, then a colleague in the Clinton Administration and a man who had been both prophetic and evangelical in his warnings of the al Qaeda threat, first describing to me what he sensed that threat to be.

Even just two years before 9/11 we went on high alert on the eve of the millennium, stopping a well-formed, multi-pronged terror threat aimed at our West Coast.

The 9/11 attacks were not even the first attack on the World Trade Center, that having taken place in 1993, also having involved Yousef, Mohammed and a half dozen or so others. In fact, several years before 9/11, I participated in a conference co-sponsored by the Naval War College that was entirely focused on terrorist threats on Wall Street. It took place on the top floor of the World Trade Center. Among those helping to support the event was Howard Lutnick, the chief executive of Cantor Fitzgerald. Many of his team from the company attended the event which considered a variety of potential ways terrorists might target the U.S. financial community including bombings using trucks or aircraft. And a few years later, some of those from Cantor Fitzgerald who attended the event would die when their offices in the World Trade Center were consumed in the attacks we have spent much of the past few weeks commemorating.

The morning of Sept. 11, I was to have met with an admiral whose office was adjacent to the wing of the building that was destroyed. But at six o'clock the night before my office received a call saying that he would have to reschedule the meeting. I was pretty put-off. For almost 15 hours.

As a consequence of the postponement of that meeting, I was in my office on the morning of Sept. 11. I was on the phone with a friend who lived in Lower Manhattan a little before 9 a.m. Suddenly, he became agitated and said, "Oh my God, oh my God." I asked what was wrong and he described for me what he had just seen, a plane flying into the north face of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. He suggested that I turn on the television in my office, which I did.

Soon after, I walked into the office next door which was occupied by my business partner at the time, former U.S. National Security Advisor Tony Lake. We were joined by another colleague, former Deputy CIA Director John Gannon. It was there that we saw the second plane hit the tower. At that moment, Tony said, "Al Qaeda" softly to himself. John nodded. It was, at that point, only a well-informed guess. But again, both men had been involved for most of the past decade in a growing effort to understand and contain the threat posed by al Qaeda and other similar groups.

Al Qaeda had officially "declared war" on the United States in 1996 and that the Clinton Administration, that had been tracking Bin Laden and his associates since almost its very first days had made him a principle target of its intelligence and counter-terror efforts years before 9/11. In 1998, for example, the Central Intelligence Agency had reported that al Qaeda was planning attacks on the United States and that personnel were being trained to hijack aircraft. In August of that year, our embassies in East Africa were attacked.

We went to lunch that day at an outdoor café near our offices, joined by another colleague, Susan Rice, today the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. I remember a meandering, vaguely surreal conversation touching upon what that day's events might mean and semi-deserted streets over which periodically could be heard jet fighters rushing overhead through the bright blue skies. There was a sense that threats which had been underestimated by many in Washington might now be taken more seriously, but even then there was also a sense that we would need to be careful to succumb to the temptation to over-reaction. As John Gannon would later often say, "the terrorists are not twelve feet tall," meaning that we should not succumb to the temptation to overstate the threat from them. And yet, of course, he was at the vanguard of those who also worked tirelessly to identify and contain the very real threats that existed.

As profound and horrifying a tragedy as it was therefore, 9/11 was not new but part of a pattern, not the beginning of a threat but in fact, one of the few instances in which the threat was realized by a small hate group with limited, sporadic capability to successfully follow-through on its grandiose, malevolent plans.

Nonetheless, due to the gravity of what happened a decade ago, we have had a tendency to set aside the historical context. It helped with the healing and indeed, it seemed respectful to those who were lost to frame the attacks as though they were something new, the act of a great enemy, a piece of a much grander struggle akin to past conflicts that took a high toll. I know when I think of those that were lost, personalizing it as we all do to the stories closest to us -- the kid who grew up across the street from me who was killed in Tower Two or my tennis partner whose sister in law was a flight attendant on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon -- there is some comfort from such an approach.

But comfort aside -- and it's no small thing, comfort, in the face of such grief -- the view is wrong. 9/11 was one of the few realized plots of a small band of outcast criminals. Such plots and such groups will always exist and we are within our rights and indeed, it is our responsibility to civilization, to eradicate such groups and take all reasonable steps to minimize such threats. But it does no one any good to overstate the risks and indeed, as we have seen, it has done us great damage to do so ... even as it has done service to the goals of al Qaeda and other radical extremists.

A decade later the attack has changed us because it touched us and altered irrevocably millions of lives here and across the Middle East. But if you look at the great issues before the United States in 2011, terror is no greater a threat nor any greater an issue today than it was throughout the 1990s. It is important, but our great challenges are the reinvention of our economy, the education of our children, the protection of our environment, the rise of new great powers and a rapidly changing global order, and the implications of participating in an interconnected, risk-filled, under-regulated, untransparent global economy.

9/11 was a heartbreaking event, an important chapter, but it was neither a beginning nor an end, not redefining nor an appropriate lodestar for future policies. As a consequence, tributes having been appropriately paid, memories having been rekindled, it is time to realize that the biggest threat posed that day comes from misunderstanding it and that the best way to contain the risks posed by the men who orchestrated it is to put them and their actions in the right historical context.

President Obama announced Wednesday that 33,000 American soldiers would be coming home from Afghanistan by next summer. The address was carefully calibrated. There was something in it for left and right, hawks and doves. Accordingly, in the wake of the speech, everyone grumbled. John Boehner asserted that Congress would hold the president accountable if progress were reversed because we were pulling out too precipitously. Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz complained the draw down was not fast enough. Vali Nasr, formerly an aide to Richard Holbrooke at the State Department, doubted whether real progress could be made on security issues at any speed and wished there were more focus on diplomatic solutions.

While my own preference would be for a faster exit than described, the specific number chosen will, in the long run be forgotten by history. It is only an indication of a temporary, transitional condition. Instead, we should look to the bigger implications of the speech -- its larger messages.

First, more important than the specific number the president chose is the trend it reflects, the bigger policy decision that has been taken. The die is cast. The troops are coming home. America's longest war will come to an end soon. The president ratcheted up the forces, they are at peak strength now, and that will soon start to change. A decade of major wars is coming to a close.

This is tied to the Obama's second major point: America's attention must now turn to nation-building at home. The president seemed at greater ease with the message he was delivering in this section of his speech; it seemed to flow more naturally than the justifications concerning troop strengths. It was clear he understands that our most crucial national security concerns lie within our own borders -- not threats from fundamentalists... but from lousy economic fundamentals.

This point is even more important than the first, as it is indicative of a crucial fact: America's foreign policy from this day forward is more likely to be driven the consequences of the economic crises of the past several years than it is by those associated with 9/11.

Finally, there was one more major message in Obama's speech that was highlighted to me in a conversation with a senior White House official shortly after it concluded. The president, he observed, was keeping his word. As he had done with Iraq, as he had done with regard to shifting our security focus in the region to Afghanistan and Pakistan, as he had done with regard to his promise to do whatever needed to be done to get Osama bin Laden, Barack Obama was sending a message to allies and enemies alike: He keeps his word.  He does what he says he is going to do.

The president rightly recognizes that America's influence around the world depends more on his credibility than it does the precise number of troops we have deployed anywhere. That credibility has been under siege for years. It was not helped by the misrepresentations of the George W. Bush years or the failures of our economic system during the recent crisis.

And while "Goldilocks solutions" like a troop withdrawal that is not too high or too low tend to leave major segments of the population disgruntled, nothing does the kind of damage that lies and deception do. The wars that are now ending in the Middle East were started by lies and prolonged by misstatements. They are now being ended by a guy who was elected to bring them to conclusion.

Try as the president's opponents in next year's elections might to quibble with his tactics, they will find that this last point -- in conjunction with the shifting priorities reflected in the other aspects of last night's speech -- may prove to be this president's most formidable advantage.

Imagine: a president who actually does what he said he was going to do. It's the kind of thing that makes withdrawals, like those announced Wednesday night, a sign of strength.

In anticipation of President Obama's announcement of his plans to draw down U.S. troops in Afghanistan, the punditocracy is once again indulging its predilection for foreign-policy numerology. What number, they buzz, will he choose?

Will he go for 30,000 troops … but set the goal for having them out as the end of next year? Will he go with a smaller number, 15,000 maybe? How fast will the drawdown go? Will there be interim targets? Will he include wiggle room for himself by saying the speed of withdrawal will depend on conditions on the ground?

Despite the focus on numbers, there is no more science to this than there is to the numbers being used to balance the federal budget. Every number is merely a symbol that means something different to a specific constituency. Tomorrow, the lower the number and the slower the rate of withdrawal, the greater deference the president will be seen to be showing to the generals. The higher the number and the faster and more certain the withdrawal targets, the more he will be seen to be responsive to the growing number of Americans who feel it's time to wrap up America's longest war.

But no one knows for sure what the "right" number is because there is no clarity about what our objectives are. And that is what the president's remarks tomorrow night really need to be about. If we are going to leave one more soldier in Afghanistan for one more day, we ought to have a very clear reason for doing so.

For the numbers to have any meaning -- indeed for the president's remarks to do so -- he needs to describe more clearly than he has to date his vision for what he hopes to achieve during the remainder of our stay there and what Afghanistan and the region will look like afterward. Al Qaeda is effectively degraded according to all reports. What more can we achieve fighting an original enemy who is no longer there? How will staying longer reduce the likelihood Afghanistan again becomes a haven for extremists? How will it help produce a government more sympathetic to our interests? Which of these goals are most important?
The metrics we use for determining success are thus much more strategically and politically significant than the mere calculation of our troop strength. That said, the most important number of all is already known to all. That is 2014, the date by which we are committed to leaving. Because our adversaries … and our "friends" who really don't like us very much … all know we will be out by then, and therefore they also know that what happens in the next couple of years is pretty much meaningless. They have been dealing with foreign interlopers for eons in that rough part of the world, and they know that time is always on their side, that clocks beat armies every time.

That makes the president's job that much tougher, of course. If his announcement is to be more than a mere political gesture, it must make the case what crucial U.S. national interests will be advanced by spending hundreds of billions more and putting tens of thousands of U.S. lives at risk in a country that we know we will be more or less out of in three years or so. What can be achieved by being "at strength" through another "fighting season" or two? What specifically? Where? What are our political goals? What does success look like? How will it look different in 2014 from what we see on the ground today? How about in the years after that?

Ten years in with over 2,400 coalition casualties and approaching half a trillion dollars spent, one thing is certain. We know that success does not look like any of the numbers we have compiled thus far.

According to the eye-opening lead story in today's New York Times, when President Obama gave the order to go get Osama, he also gave the order to go with enough strength to fight off resistance or interference from our Pakistani allies. Which has to trump (in both timeliness and relevance), the story broken by The Guardian detailing how about a decade ago the United States and Pakistan reached a secret deal allowing the U.S. to go into Pakistan after bin Laden ... and Pakistan the right to complain about it afterwards.

It has gotten far beyond face-saving posturing in the U.S.-Pakistan relationship. This was further demonstrated by the sorry effort made by Pakistan's Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani in his first post-raid speech to the Pakistani parliament. His assertion that suspicions of Pakistani complicity in protecting bin Laden were "absurd" sounded just as desperate and hollow as his threats that Pakistan would "retaliate with full force" if the United States violated its sovereignty again. Clearly, per the excellent Eric Schmitt, Thom Shanker, and David Sanger story in today's Times, the United States had anticipated such a response this last time around and come to the conclusion that an extra few dozen troops and two helicopters should just about do it in fending off that threat.

Having said that, the degree of unease with the relationship illustrated by the expectation of possible resistance from the Pakistanis may be a less worrisome sign of how troubled the relationship is than the apparent ok by the president to use force against our nominal ally if it came to that.

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The tsunami and earthquake that tragically struck Japan today could not come at a worse moment for the Japanese. The economy has been struggling for almost two decades to recover and seemed poised to make progress, but now has suffered yet another bitter blow. The costs of rebuilding will add to already high deficits and high anxiety. It is only fortunate that there is perhaps no other country in the world as well prepared to deal with earthquakes and their consequences as Japan.

That said, the disaster also resonates in many ways with what is happening elsewhere in the world. It reminds us that "black swans" are not rare events. Indeed, the first few months of this year have demonstrated yet again that nothing in this world is as commonplace as the unexpected. That is no doubt more a commentary on the way we arrive at expectations than it is on the nature of life on the planet.  In just the past 10 weeks alone, we have seen revolutions, earthquakes, major economies downgraded by credit ratings agencies, spiking energy and food prices, and the usual accompanying market roller coaster rides that bespeak the fact that we are collectively spun around by events more often than your average weathervane is by the daily breeze.

Another way the tsunami resonates is with the images we have already seen on the television of it sweeping ashore -- a great black wave of destruction -- causing havoc and then retreating to the sea. As I watched I couldn't help but wonder if that was not how we were ultimately going to view the upheaval that has rocked the Middle East this year. There came a wave and great drama and then, almost as quickly, the wave withdrew and was forgotten.

Certainly, we are at risk of such an outcome at the moment. If Qaddafi succeeds in pushing back the rebels during the next couple of days, the world may well conclude -- if it has not done so already -- that supporting the Libyan opposition may be a losing proposition. And if Qaddafi wins and reestablishes his control on the country through brutality, it will send a strong message to other regimes across the region that the right response to rebellion is to be both ferocious and merciless.

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While it is often ruefully noted that you can't pick your relatives, there is an expectation in life that you can pick your partners. Barack Obama is discovering that when you are president of the United States, that's just not the case.

In fact, if there is one theme that runs through every corner of the Obama presidency it is that he has been forced into partnerships that are so complex, difficult, and undependable that it must leave him yearning for the relative simplicity of good old fashioned enmities. This was illustrated yesterday as the president made the short walk across Lafayette Park to visit the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, symbolic headquarters of the U.S. business community, a group with which the president has come to realize he must work more closely going forward.

But in and amid all those complicated relationships, which are the most difficult? Naturally, there are many ways to measure this but we'll stick with one: Which among the most difficult are most likely to blow up in his face during the next two years?

Here's the verdict:

10. China
This, the most important international bilateral relationship, is both difficult and likely to be relatively stable because it is so complex. There is so much economic co-dependency here that the political issues are likely to work themselves out. Over the next two years trade and currency tensions may grow, but it is unlikely that either side will flirt with a big blow up prior to the 2012 leadership change in China or the presidential elections that same year in the U.S.

9. Russia
China is likely to be the U.S. most important international counterpart in the decade ahead but Russia remains the wildcard among the major powers. Stephen Cohen summed it up well on "Morning Joe" this morning: Russia's the biggest country in landmass, the leader in energy output and it has all those nuclear weapons. It also has a massive Muslim population, related challenges in its near abroad, memories of empire and what might politely be called a mischievous streak when it comes to international challenges. Oh, and it is undergoing a demographic meltdown and it is suffering from a divided less-than-dependably friendly political leadership. It's at the bottom of this list primarily because of the "next two years" focus of our metric.

8. Israel
Israel is the United States' most dependable friend in the Middle East and a vital ally. That said it is also facing massively unsettling changes from within and without that are creating enormous pressures on its political leaders. The Bibi-Barack marriage was never exactly made in Heaven but as the Israelis face demographic pressures at home, the Hezbollah take-over of Lebanon, instability in Jordan and Egypt, the prospect of a nuclear Iran, growing international pressure to cut a deal with the Palestinians and seeming growing inability of the Palestinians to cut a deal due to their own internal divisions ... what was difficult is going to get any easier. While many expect Netanyahu to offer his own concessions and a roadmap to progress sometime soon, there is real concern even among his supporters whether he can go far enough to break the logjam in the peace process. If he can't, pressure will build in this already fraught partnership.

7. Egypt
Egypt nudges out Israel only because it is so volatile right now and we don't know where the current unrest now heading into its third week is likely to head. One thing we do know, there are almost no circumstances in which the relationship will be easier for the United States. If there are massive reforms, a more pluralistic Egypt will be harder to deal with than an autocracy with a fairly dependable ally at the helm. If the current regime holds, they will never trust the U.S. in the same way as they did prior to this crisis.

6. Democrats in the Congress
Will Rogers said, "I'm not a member of any organized party, I'm a Democrat!" And as far as we know he never sat at a cocktail party between bickering leaders like Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer or Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer. (Although, Pelosi clearly had a little celebratory sip of champagne last night to celebrate the departure of Jane Harmon, a longtime thorn in her side.) Pick an issue from fighting the deficit to rationalizing our regulatory framework to investing in energy infrastructure, you'll find both Obama's biggest supporters and some of his most difficult opponents in his own party.

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While President Obama may have ignored my personnel advice, he may have made excellent decisions anyway. If, as the rumor mill has it, Bill Daley, the former Commerce Secretary is to be the new chief of staff at the White House and Gene Sperling is to replace Larry Summers at the National Economic Council, Obama will have picked two pros who can both provide needed continuity and needed change. Daley knows how to get things done and is well-liked by business people. Sperling has done the job, is exceptionally smart and will run a much more open, inclusive shop than Summers … and empowering the economic cabinet is a key must-do for the Obama team.

David Brooks's op-ed in the New York Times on the uselessness of the pro and con debate about "big government" is half right and half wrong. He's right it does not matter how big or small government is but whether it works effectively and in support of a nation with the will and resources to succeed. But it is half wrong in that within the debate is a question about the appropriate role of government. Here Republicans argue that government should stay out of people's affairs and market's business wherever possible and Democrats are willing to accept a more expansive role. The reality, of course, is that no country can tackle the problems we face as a country without a major role for government. Whether the issue is infrastructure, energy policy, education, fixing what is broken fiscally, ensuring honest and fair markets, protecting the environment or preserving the peace, America's biggest challenges require the government be there and be effective. Right now though the debate sounds like two dating services that are suggesting the choice in the dating market is between Mother Theresa and Snooki. It is not even the right discussion to be having.

While it may not have been very politic for a U.S. battlefield commander in Afghanistan to liken the situation on the ground to a Tom and Jerry cartoon, it offers yet another insight into the futility of the conflict there. Richard Cohen in the Washington Post gets it exactly right when he calls this an unnecessary war and likens our tolerance of it and the public's lack of urgent interest in it to factors which could fuel our national decline, akin to what happened during the fall of the Roman and British empires. He is not overstating it. We're going bankrupt and wasting lives trying to do the impossible for a cause that's un-winnable. Every day we continue to fight in Afghanistan U.S. leaders are abusing the public's trust, killing our young and stealing from their orphaned children to pay for it.

Speaking of bankruptcy, I have a sense that Obama's "air traffic controller moment" will come when a big public pension fund goes belly up and the federal government is asked to step in to bail it out… with a long-line of similar cases on deck. He will face a dangerously slippery slope and public opinion will be heavily for giving the public workers a haircut on their benefits. Obama will face huge pressure from SEIU, one of the most important unions backing him. And he will define whether he is serious or not about pulling the United States out of this mess and getting us back on our feet by whether or not he gives in to that pressure. The right answer is to start negotiating deals downward now, walk the crisis back before it happens, reduce the benefits packages and give the states and municipalities the breathing room they need… or huge lay-offs and deteriorating public conditions are certain to result. Not to mention a big financial crisis.

I have all the respect in the world for Zbigniew Brzezinski. But his op-ed in the Times, in which he calls Chinese Premiere Hu's visit one of the most important in 30 years, while thoughtfully argued, is misleading on that core point. No doubt, the visit is more important than the last because China is more important than the last time the leaders met. However, by the same logic, the next visit will probably be more important. Further, with a leadership change in the offing, the first meetings with the next generation of leaders are almost certain to be more important still. The key issues for the two countries to resolve are longer term in nature and go to the core question of shaping a successful working relationship between two strategic rivals that are also vital partners. Right now, too much of the power in the relationship seems to have swung to the Chinese. The United States must -- through a better understanding of its own national interests and competitive advantages, through marshalling diplomatic support worldwide for its initiatives, and through regaining economic momentum and avoiding international distractions --resume a stronger stance in the relationship. It must resist the temptation to mesmerized by China hype and it must build an international coalition to counterbalance Chinese influence and ensure that before China assumes a greater role on the international stage, it is clear the country is willing to play a constructive role helping to address global challenges from combating proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to maintaining stable financial markets to fighting global warming.

The most important story in the world as 2011 begins: the continuing political unrest in Pakistan, marked by the weakening of the government's coalition over the weekend and the assassination of the prominent governor of Punjab, a Zardari supporter. A political meltdown in Pakistan is the one event that will have great powers worldwide holding their breaths (although further economic meltdown in the Eurozone and in U.S. states and localities is a close second on this watch list.)

So, let's take a look at the papers and see how all that foreign policy is going for us, shall we?

• "As U.S. assesses mission, Karzai is a question mark" -- here on the front page of the Washington Post is a devastating appraisal of the state of the U.S. relationship with our man in Kabul, Hamid Karzai. It features Karzai fulminating to Gen. David Petraeus and Amb. Karl Eikenberry that in his view he's got three principal "enemies," and that if forced to choose among them he would take the Taliban over the U.S. and our international allies.
• "More Christians are Fleeing Iraq in New Violence" -- in this, the lead story in the New York Times this morning, we learn that, as the opening paragraph puts it: "A new wave of Iraqi Christians has fled to northern Iraq or abroad amid a campaign of violence against them and growing fear that the country's security forces are unable or, more ominously, unwilling to protect them."
• In the Financial Times, Dec. 12's pages two and three featured the following headlines: "Swedes call for calm after bombs," "Racists battle riot police in Moscow streets," and "Debt refinancing sparks fears of deeper euro crisis."
• The Wall Street Journal features a profile of Umberto Bossi, the Italian political power broker and ally of besieged Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who calls immigrants "bingo bongos" and who flipped his country the bird during the Italian national anthem. The punch line is that this clown is representative of a resurgence of a European loony right wing that is giving the United States' anti-immigration nut-jobs a run for their money in the 'let's blame it on the brown people' sweepstakes. Or as the Daily Mail puts it in their own story on their own right wing hate brigade, The English Defence League, "they make the Tea Party look like a bunch of left wing liberals."
• The Journal also features an op-ed by one of their own fringe characters, Mary Anastasia O'Grady, the Americas columnist who still thinks she's in the jungles of Central America battling commies most of the time. But this time she puts her finger on yet another place where a vaunted foreign policy initiative is going awry, Haiti, in a piece entitled "Haiti's Preval Tries to Steal an Election."
• Speaking of borderline personality disorder, over at The Drudge Report, if you skimmed the headlines you were treated to choice entries like: "NKorea threatens SKorea with nuclear war" and "Iran conducts large military exercise near Iraq border." Of course they are joined with usual Drudge international fare which all seems to be oriented how strange and downright un-American the rest of the world is like: "China's 'City Jade Men' Indulge in Mud Masks and L'OREAL Creams" and a story about an Iranian man being blinded with acid in an "eye for an eye" punishment for blinding his lover's husband.
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This is a critical moment for the United States's most fraught diplomatic challenge.

Pakistani officials arrive in Washington this week for meetings designed to shore up a relationship that is both vital and exceedingly dangerous for both regimes. The Pakistani delegation will nominally be led by the country's foreign minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi. But the real focus will be the man who many feel is so powerful that the fact he is not yet president reflects only a personal choice on his part. As Pakistan's top military officer, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani might as well be known as General Plan B. If the current government stumbles, if unrest spreads, U.S. officials are fully counting on him to step in and put a lid on the problem.

The conversations this week will be publicly focused on gestures of support for the Pakistanis from the U.S. government, from beefing up civilian and military aid to generating public statements of common purpose. But behind the scenes there will be palpable tension. The United States is dissatisfied -- the feeling being that Pakistan is not doing everything it can to assist in tracking down extremist groups living within their borders.

That discomfort undoubtedly is not eased by the exclusive report in Britain's Guardian today that is entitled, "Pakistan intelligence services 'aided Mumbai terror attacks.'" The story describes a 109-page Indian government report based on the interrogation of David Headley; the Pakistani-American arrested in relation to the Mumbai attacks. "Under questioning," writes Jason Burke, "Headley described dozens of meetings between officers of the main Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI, and senior militants from the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) group responsible for the Mumbai attacks."

While the perspectives provided by Headley offer just one view and include a number of statements suggesting that senior ISI officials may not have been plugged into the entire Mumbai plan, they corroborate much of what has long been suspected about ties between the ISI and extremist groups. Further, they tell an unsettlingly logical story of how the Mumbai attacks were undertaken as part of a deliberate strategy by the historically more regionally-focused Lashkar-e-Taiba to remain relevant in a world in which competing terrorist groups were attracting members seeking the grander mission of jihad against the West.

It is a nauseating image: officials of a government nominally allied to the United States working with terrorists to plan a murderous attack on innocents as a marketing ploy on behalf of their stone cold terrorists of choice. Nauseating, but despite Pakistani denials that it is baseless, with the unmistakable ring of truth.

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It can be argued that one of the several ways in which most states have lost power during the past several decades is associated with the declining inclination and ability of most to go to war. Hard as this may be to accept in a world in which wars dominate the headlines, it is a fact and it has several origins.

First, fewer than 20 countries really possess the power to project force beyond their borders in any meaningful way. Further, only about a dozen have nuclear capability, and fewer still have any long-distance missile capability. And only one really has the capability to wage global war from space, land, sea, and air. (And that one seems stretched waging two regional conflicts in the Middle East.)

Further the costs associated with modern warfare are too high. The 20th Century delivered this message in devastatingly clear human terms and the economic costs were also proven to be immense. War went from being an all too regularly used form of diplomacy by other means to being madness.

Major powers were forced not by goodness but by a rational calculus to find other ways to resolve disputes. Not always...but with greater regularity than in the past. To take just one example, Europe, once addicted to war, effectively swore off the continental conflicts that defined its history. For the most part, war became an affliction of failed or failing states or a very regionalized phenomenon. The big powers for the most part took on much weaker adversaries or engaged in proxy conflicts. And even those engagements have grown intolerably costly as advanced technologies were demonstrated to combine well with unconventional tactics on the part of weaker states engaging stronger ones.

While risks still abound, long term trends have been encouraging...Until now.

Take three news stories from the past week. The first is the piece in today's Times indicating that U.S. commanders are contemplating increasing drone attacks in Pakistan due to concerns about inaction by the Pakistani military. The second concerns reports of a computer worm targeting the Iranian nuclear program. And the last is associated with the statement by Hugo Chavez that Venezuela, though sitting on an ocean of oil, needed to seriously explore "peaceful" nuclear technologies.

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Think tanks being what they are -- large meat lockers in which future government bureaucrats are stored until needed -- the reports they produce tend to be little more than exercises in reputation management. They state the obvious, then slather it in a bland, nutrient-free sauce of quasi-academic qualifications that seek to explain why they are really not saying anything new or practical. The best of them offer course corrections that are minuscule at best, and new ideas are as hard to find as honest politicians in the Karzai administration.

Which brings us to the latest such report to be issued, one that proves to be the exception to the rule. That report is "A New Way Forward: Rethinking U.S. Strategy in Afghanistan" from the New America Foundation. It is one of the very few such documents that I have recently read and found myself nodding at almost every turn of the page. It is so good that it almost restores my youthful belief in the potential benefits of putting smart people around a table and letting them cogitate and argue and bullshit and grapple with tough problems. Produced by a glittering group of wonks, it contains real thoughtful insights into America's situation in Afghanistan and comes to sound, generally implementable conclusions about what the United States should do to avoid making a very bad situation even worse.

The report is well summarized in an article by Steve Clemons, one of its architects, that appears in Politico. In short, it makes the case that spending $100 billion a year to fight a war we can't win in Afghanistan is just one of several reasons that America's policies are misguided and demand immediate correction. He writes, "Though Obama is more likeable, and often more inspiring, than the fictional captain in the Melville novel, Afghanistan has now become the Moby Dick to Obama's Ahab."

The report begins by revisiting the forgotten territory of America's initial reasons to be involved in the region in the first place. It correctly notes there are only two: preventing Afghanistan from being a staging ground for further terrorist attacks against the United States, and doing what we can to reduce the threat that Pakistani weapons of mass destruction might fall into the wrong hands. It argues correctly that if we focus on these two goals, then our mission, military and diplomatic presence in the region would and should look very different.

It makes five key recommendations. The first is promoting power sharing and political inclusion in a more decentralized Afghanistan: In other words, trying to work with rather than against the historical and cultural tides in the country. Second is downsizing and ending military operations in southern Afghanistan and reducing the military presence there. Third is focusing the military's attention on Al Qaeda, which is no longer really present in Afghanistan but remains an issue in Pakistan. (Notably, the New America group suggests using the cost-savings the drawdown would produce to bolster U.S. domestic security and contain the spread of weapons of mass destruction worldwide.) Fourth is encouraging the promotion of economic development, while emphasizing that this should be an internationally rather than U.S. led effort. (Hallelujah to that.) Finally, it recommends collaborating with influential states in the region to ensure Afghanistan is not dominated by "any single power or being permanently a failed state that exports instability." The report notes that those states -- Pakistan, India, China, Iran and Saudi Arabia -- aren't the best of pals, but suggests correctly that there are ways to work with each or even small clusters of them to promote these outcomes that are, for the most part, in their interests.

Point five is a bit of a stretch. Point four is more or less boilerplate, though worthy of emphasizing. The reality is that Afghanistan will become a strongman dominated quasi-failed state, but that as long as our core goals in the region -- the two mentioned above -- are met, then we should be less concerned with whatever structure produces an outcome supportive of them.

Personally, I think the international community needs to be involved actively in ensuring that whatever successor state emerges, the rights of all Afghans -- and notably women and tribal minorities -- are respected and protected. It is also true that Pakistan is the real problem and appropriate subject of U.S. attention in this region, and that this requires forthrightly addressing what diplomatic and force structure is required to promote stability and contain threats within that country.

But this report is clear-eyed, direct, well-argued and in its tone even more than its substance sends a message that the only door we should head for in that country is the one with the exit sign over it. In Clemons article he notes that the United States spends seven times Afghanistan's own GDP on our involvement there -- an amount equal to the cost of the recent U.S. health care legislation, and one that if saved could pay down the U.S. deficit in 14 years. The recklessness and irresponsibility of such a costly involvement, given America's other urgent priorities and the true nature of the threats within Afghanistan, makes the blood boil.

It does no dishonor to our military to wish their lives and services were available for other missions. Reports like this raise the hope that opinion is shifting in ways that may lead us to just such a desirable outcome.

News from around the world this weekend:

In Israel, during a sermon, 89 year-old Rabbi Ovadia Yousef, spiritual leader of Israel's ultra-orthodox Shas political party, attacked the Palestinian people and their President Mahmoud Abbas, calling them "enemies and haters." Then, he went on to call for their deaths, saying, "May they vanish from the world, may God smite them with the plague, them and the Palestinians, evil-doers and Israelhaters." The Israeli government soon after issued a statement asserting that "These words do not reflect the approach of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu nor the position of the government of Israel." This distancing from a key player in a party that is an important part of the current coalition government, holding four seats in the Israeli cabinet, seems pallid in the face of such repugnant remarks that were clearly designed to cast a shadow over the imminent resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. As one Israeli Knesset member argued, "If God forbid a Muslim religious leader would express similar sentiments toward Jews, he would immediately be arrested."

In Afghanistan, five campaign workers supporting the efforts of a female candidate for the country's parliament, were gunned down. The murders, in Andraskan district of Herat province, followed the kidnapping of the five men on Thursday.

Read on

Reviewing the results of General David Petraeus's media blitz this weekend, you have to wonder if the folks in the White House might be wishing they were back in the good old days of the boneheaded media missteps and ham-fisted leaks of General Stanley "Got My Picture on the Cover of Rolling Stone" McChrystal.

(And if they don't understand why they should be ... then, well, you just have to wonder ...)

In particular, you would think they couldn't help but notice the tactical genius behind the general's latest -- media -- surge. Take one of its spotlight moments, the lead story in Monday's New York Times. Take the way he makes the case for resisting the impulse to pull out of Afghanistan:

General Petraeus said that it was only in the last few weeks that the war plan had been fine-tuned and given the resources it required. ‘For the first time,' he said, ‘we will have been working to put in place for the last year and a half.'"

The Times goes on to note that on "Meet the Press" the general even "appeared to leave open the possibility that he would recommend against any withdrawal of American forces next summer."

Let's consider: "...only in the last few weeks that the war plan had been fine-tuned." Really, general? So what was that yearlong policy review about? The past nine years of effort by U.S. military planners -- the last several of which have involved your active participation and supervision? This is the Charlie Sheen approach to military planning: just give me one more chance, please, just one more and I promise I'll get it right this time.

Let's consider: "...and given the resources it required." I see, you're saying that we've only now finished ramping up. But certainly the president, acting on your advice, recognized this moment was coming at the conclusion of that policy review, right? Or when he and others in his administration repeated promises that the drawdown would take place since then? In fact, wasn't the whole point of the president's new Afghan strategy that we would ramp up and then almost immediately transfer responsibilities to the Afghans and get out? Either you are suggesting that process, in which you played such a central role, was bungled or you are suggesting that the president and his advisors knew that the escalate-withdraw one-two punch of the articulated strategy was a have-it-both-ways scam.

In either case, what's up with generals discussing what their private advice to the president might be prior to discussing it with the president? What's up with generals seeming to make or "fine-tune" policy that might in time make things very awkward for the president? Petraeus is no doubt being honest about his views. But here's the point: Unlike McChrystal, he is a key validator for the president and thus has political heft that few others have. Especially after the McChrystal debacle, Petraeus' weight in the policy-making apparatus has gone up, particularly if he is as willing as he seems to be to conduct his efforts via the media.

What? You think the White House approved all this? OK, it's possible, I suppose. But let's go back to that "it's only in the past few weeks that the war plan has been fine-tuned." That would mean the White House okayed a statement that suggested that, 20 months into this administration, they were just now getting around to finalizing their plan for what is certainly their signature foreign policy initiative. Do they -- or the general -- really think that this "just give us one more try" approach is going to work with the American people after almost a decade of tragic losses and mind-boggling expense? In a war that can't be won?

Petraeus's behavior shouldn't come as that much of surprise. (In fact, I have said since he took on his new job that he would ultimately prove to be a much bigger challenge for the White House than McChrystal ever was -- in large part because of his stature, intellect, and candor.) After all, this is the man who appeared before Congress and said of the last war he was in charge of, "I don't know if war in Iraq makes Americans safer." Was he right to doubt it? Sure. Did his articulating that position help his civilian bosses? You can ask them if you can find them on their various book tours and other retirement activities.

Of course, the buzz over the general's weekend blitz through the nation's capital is secondary to a host of bigger issues here. To take just one example, it pales in comparison to the recent study done by the military examining the mind-boggling, heart-breaking fact that suicides exceed battlefield deaths among American Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. As the study concluded: "Simply stated, we are often more dangerous to ourselves than the enemy."

It's a tragedy that warrants much closer attention than it has gotten. It bespeaks a horrific breakdown in our system of caring for our veterans. But in wars like these -- with impossible, constantly shifting objectives, allies who are enemies and leaders who are constantly second-guessing either themselves or each other -- is it any wonder that we are the source of greatest danger to our own troops?

The Wall Street Journal runs a story entitled "TV Host Targets Afghan Women's Shelters." It describes an effort by a 27-year-old Afghan TV personality named Nasto Nadiri to promote shutting down shelters for women, which he argues "are not acceptable for our people who have fought 30 years to put the word 'Islam' in front of Afghanistan." He resents that "some NGOs come and want to make another way for our country." Many of the women are in shelters seeking protection from death threats from their own families, families who condemn their daughters for "immorality" for running away from arranged marriages.

Time magazine a week earlier runs a cover featuring the image of a woman brutalized in the name of Islam and arguing that should we leave Afghanistan, countless other women will suffer her fate. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton argues we will not forget the women of Afghanistan -- that they are one of the reasons we are there. The government of Brazil makes a fumbled effort to offer sanctuary to a woman sentenced to stoning under Islamic law. The same fate and worse affects women across the Islamic world who violate religious precepts and are treated as second-class citizens according to the dictates of local clergy turned lawmakers.

For policymakers and for people who care about the moral and ethical underpinnings of policy, there is a dark and difficult conundrum presented here. If we embrace tolerance, celebrate diversity and promote religious freedom, what do we do when a religion or a subset of its practitioners or a culture promotes a view that is fundamentally inconsistent with the most basic, most universally acknowledged principles of human rights?

To answer this question honestly requires considerable courage. To live by the implications of that answer requires even more.

The fundamental human rights of women trump the teachings of any religion. To denigrate, abuse, or devalue in any way the majority population of the earth -- mothers, daughters and sisters -- is either an affront to God or alternatively, if it is argued that it is the will of God, it is an affront to decency.

For the United States, embroiled in a war in Afghanistan and entangled with allies and others throughout the world who promote or tolerate policies that are unfair or cruel to women, the challenges are great. As Time asks, "Do we leave if by leaving we sentence women to decades or centuries more of enslavement, compromise and debasement in the name of religion and cultural history?" Would we do so if the reasons for the abuse were that they were black or Jewish or Christian?

History suggests that the answer is, sadly, yes. And frankly, a prolonged stay in Afghanistan is neither in the U.S. interest nor, in fact, is it moral on its own because it produces an appalling waste of life and resources and much suffering in pursuit of an unachievable goal. (Regardless of how small the president argues that ever-shrinking goal has become.)

But we cannot leave Afghanistan nor can we continue to pursue our goals in Pakistan or develop our relations with the Saudis or consider the future of our relations with the Iranians...nor can we appropriately contemplate relations with any nation and at the same time turn a blind eye to the systematic abuse of women and its justification by friends, enemies and whatever it is you might call the Afghan or Pakistani governments.

Should we be providing aid of any sort to any nation that doesn't honor the most basic tenets of the universal declaration of human rights? Should we be allied with or, worse still, should we protect with the young men and women of America any society that seeks to treat women as property, sets double-standards for "moral" behavior, punishes violation of those standards with torture, stoning or legalized murder?

Does realpolitik give these societies a pass? Does "honoring Islam"?

The answer should be no and no. What is going on in these countries is a disgrace every bit as grand and incomprehensible and awful as the Holocaust -- only it is much bigger, much more ancient, and if possible, much more evil if only due to the extent of its reach and the breadth of our acceptance of what has happened.

We need a new international understanding on these issues, one that will produce a coalition of nations that will strictly enforce a ban on aid to countries that abuse women -- and one that will introduce sanctions on those countries until they comply with what must be the most basic entry-level rules for participating in global society. No one has been more tireless or vocal in pursuit of these goals than Clinton and one hopes that the experience of Afghanistan and her increased exposure to the region will produce something beyond the heart-felt rhetoric and halfway measures we have seen on these issues.

We can't be a moral society and turn a blind eye to this. Nor can we call ourselves honorable and ally ourselves to those who tolerate or empower the abusers. Our geopolitical objectives in the Middle East are not greater than the rights of women everywhere. Fighting terror is not greater than our obligation to those women. And no religion, nor any government that acts "in the name of religious values" that promotes the abuse of anyone, is worthy of our tolerance.