This is a guest note by Fadi Elsalameen, Executive Director of The Palestine Note, the website where this post originally appeared.

Ramallah - For three years, Salam Fayyad, the Prime Minister in the West Bank Palestinian Authority (PA), has been a focal point for Mideast debate.

As an unelected official, he is reviled by Hamas and democracy activists alike for taking over the PA after the disillusion of the 2007 Palestinian unity government. He is also said to have alienated many within Fatah, the party of President Mahmoud Abbas, who see him as a limit to their influence in the West Bank.

But he has also won praise from other segments of society and adoration among Western commentators for his program of reforming, broadening and rebuilding Palestinian institutions, a process he says is a step toward founding a Palestinian state.

Yet his state-building program, too, has come under scruitiny, prominently with the release of a study in July by Nathan Brown of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which argued that Fayyad's program is lagging in key areas such as the rule of law, and that his efforts are proceeding in an "authoritarian context."

Confronted with these and other criticisms, Fayyad has an unflinching, some would say misguided, faith in himself and his program, which he sees as having "transformative" potential.

"This is a state-building track," he told Palestine Note's Fadi Elsalameen in an interview at his Ramallah office.

He added that his efforts are "supposed to ensure readiness for statehood. We think it's going to take us two years to get there. It's a bit ambitious, but doable despite the occupation. To end it, to end it means that--that's the dynamism of this--build, build, build despite the occupation to end it."

So great is Fayyad's confidence in the power of his own plans that he believes popular support for them could eventually be the key to reuniting the PA.

"Political parties, Hamas included, will find themselves compelled to go along," with his state-building vision, coupled with hoped-for progress in peace negotiations, Fayyad said. "Or they resist and they start to pay dearly in political terms, a very, very heavy political price associated with going against that trend."

Fadi Elsalameen: How do you respond to Nathan Brown's Carnegie Endowment study that criticizes your program?

Salam Fayyad: It's a question of building up capacity. It cannot be taken literally or nominally as building institutions that did not exist before. Especially when he says that the issue was maintenance of existing institutions. That's a badge of honor. Fixing, reforming, maintaining--that's very much the nature of the task. Reform, upgrading capacity, getting those institutions better able to deliver services, maintaining them. All of these are elements of the state-building effort. To complete the task of getting ready for statehood. So to suggest we are building things from scratch, I never said that. The program doesn't say that, but when you're talking about building up capacity to govern ourselves effectively, that could mean introducing new institutions. But it certainly focuses on bringing up capacity of existing institutions.

In terms of infrastructure, there, of course, have been lots of new things. You can't say, "They're just maintaining existing infrastructure." Over the span of two years, we implemented 1,000 community development programs, especially in rural areas, long-marginalized and most devastated by war, settlement activity, and whatnot. It's going to take us about half the time to implement the next batch of 1,000 projects--we're almost halfway through. You know, we celebrated project 1,000, I said afterward the next 1,000 projects will take us only one year. Before the year is out, I said, we're going to have another 1,000 such projects. And we are more than halfway through that mark already today, and I am certain we are going to make it. This will involve water, electricity, new schools, road networks, rural roads, the recreation center that your colleague started in Nablus [Tomorrow's Youth Organization] for the refugee camp. People have a lot of opportunities now that did not exist before. That really enters under the heading of 'new.'

And it's very much related to the need to enhance the capacity of our people to withstand the adversity of occupation. On the way to statehood, on the way to freedom, you don't do these things--people do not have adequate education and services. They want to leave if they could. Just exactly the opposite of what we need to be doing. With all due respect, it's very superficial [Nathan Brown's argument]. I can better understand and better relate to those who assert that this is the other side of Netanyahu's economic peace coin. At least there is some thinking that went into making that statement that I cannot really dismiss as being superficial. It's wrong, I disagree with it, but at least there's a little bit of thought process that I can see leading to that conclusion. But here, to say, "Oh, there are no new institutions," that's almost childish. I don't know who funded this work, and it does not really... [have] any degree of scholarship. It's just really weak. How can you do that? And on the basis of what? Anecdotal stuff? "I talked to people." Who are they? I would like to know how many people he talked to. Forget about whom he talked to, but how many people he talked to. Assuming it's an unbiased sample, how many people did he talk to? How long did he stay here, to form these impressions? And it's not true that it's only Ramallah. We started this campaign in Nablus. So, this is way too superficial, if you ask me. Way, way too superficial.

Although I have had the clip above for days in a queue, I am embarrassed that I am just seeing this powerful exchange now.

It is simply remarkable to watch and hear former Bush administration Solicitor General Ted Olson make the clearest, strongest case for the full civil rights of gay and lesbian Americans -- indeed, all Americans -- that I have ever heard.

Fox's Chris Wallace tried hard to trip up Olson, and that's his job -- but he just couldn't do it.

Olson is a busy lawyer, with many more cases than this one to deal with -- but would be great to have him on Don't Ask/Don't Tell.

Huge thanks to Ted Olson for the extraordinary role he is playing in reshaping the American civil rights environment.

-- Steve Clemons

In an important article titled "The Point of No Return" to be published in The Atlantic tomorrow, national correspondent Jeffrey Goldberg recounts something many people didn't realize at the time and still have a hard time believing. President George W. Bush knocked back Dick Cheney's wing of the foreign policy establishment - both inside and out of his administration - that wanted to launch a bombing campaign against Iran. In a snippet I had not seen before, Bush mockingly referred to bombing advocates Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer as "the bomber boys."

George W. Bush was showing his inner realist not allowing his own trigger-happy Curtis LeMays pile on to the national security messes the US already owned in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But that was several years ago. Today, there is a new US President, more Iranian centrifuges, and a different Israeli Prime Minister - and Bibi Netanyahu seems closer to a Curtis LeMay, John Bolton or Frank Gaffney than he does to the more containment-oriented Eisenhowers and George Kennans who in their day forged a global equilibrium out of superpower rivalry and hatred.

Today's New York Times features a dispatch from Portugal today, discussing the amazing growth as well as the pitfalls of Portugal's rapid transition in building its renewable energy capacity. Nearly 45% of Portugal's energy will come from renewable sources this year, outpacing many other countries, including the United States:

Although a 2009 report by the agency called Portugal's renewable energy transition a "remarkable success," it added, "It is not fully clear that their costs, both financial and economic, as well as their impact on final consumer energy prices, are well understood and appreciated."

Indeed, complaints about rising electricity rates are a mainstay of pensioners' gossip here. Mr. Sócrates, who after a landslide victory in 2005 pushed through the major elements of the energy makeover over the objections of the country's fossil fuel industry, survived last year's election only as the leader of a weak coalition.

"You cannot imagine the pressure we suffered that first year," said Manuel Pinho, Portugal's minister of economy and innovation from 2005 until last year, who largely masterminded the transition, adding, "Politicians must take tough decisions."

Still, aggressive national policies to accelerate renewable energy use are succeeding in Portugal and some other countries, according to a recent report by IHS Emerging Energy Research of Cambridge, Mass., a leading energy consulting firm. By 2025, the report projected, Ireland, Denmark and Britain will also get 40 percent or more of their electricity from renewable sources; if power from large-scale hydroelectric dams, an older type of renewable energy, is included, countries like Canada and Brazil join the list.

The United States, which last year generated less than 5 percent of its power from newer forms of renewable energy, will lag behind at 16 percent (or just over 20 percent, including hydroelectric power), according to IHS.

The growing gap between the U.S. and other countries in producing renewable is interesting to see, but more telling is the article's explanations for why so little progress has been made in this country, an alternate combination of aging infrastructure, lack of political will, and pressure from energy lobbying groups. Indeed, it is telling that much of what the article says for why America is not further expanding its development of renewable energy has to do with political considerations.

This is not to say that America can emulate the Portuguese or other European models for energy development; as the article points out that many American energy grids are out-of-date and require serious upgrades, our great distances and suburban sprawl make energy transfer complicated, and even the "successful" European models for energy development, especially solar energy, require huge subsidies to stay solvent. As I have written, I recently visited a massive and state-of-the-art solar panel factory in Saxony, where after a lengthy presentation on the company's growth and market share in Germany and around the world, a company spokesman still admitted that without government subsidies it would be difficult to continue their development and production.

Still, moving forward we must make sure that it is economic, infrastructure, and environmental concerns that determine how we develop renewable energy sources, rather than political ones.

-- Andrew Lebovich

The Huffington Post's Dan Froomkin has highlighted a powerful video montage by his colleague HuffPost video editor Ben Craw on comments made by then-Senator Obama on Iraq in 2007 & President Obama on US policy towards Afghanistan.

There are many notable moments in this constellation of past commentary -- but the heaviest zinger is when then Senator Obama, as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, asks Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about benchmarks for America's increasing troop deployments to Iraq.

He asks:

"At what point do we say: 'Enough'?"

Exactly.

-- Steve Clemons

This is a guest note by General Asad Durrani, who previously served as the head of Pakistan's ISI, or Inter-Services Intelligence. Durrani later served as Pakistan's Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany and to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Double or Quits

A soldier can do better than dying on the battlefield in pursuit of paradise -- he can send his adversary to hell.

That at least was once the unofficial American doctrine. Diplomats too occasionally dispatch each other to hell; the British traditionally in a manner that the adversary looks forward to the journey. The subtlety was lost on Pakistan.

Though often persuaded to go to hell, at times all expenses paid, the country keeps turning back from the brink. The British Prime-Minister therefore decided that the time for diplomatic equivocation was past and this enfant terrible had to be told in no uncertain terms that it was playing a "double game".

We were indeed not amused, but can now be blamed for "double standards". Earlier we had applauded David Cameron when he fired the first shot from his double-barrel: blamed Israel for turning Gaza into a prison. It was more than a diplomatic gaffe. For him it could be politically fatal. We should make amends and encourage the young Prime-Minister to carry on catching the bulls from their horns.

It is not because I wish him more trouble with Israel or with his political opponents. I also must acknowledge that but for the diplomatic mambo-jumbo we may at times be in serious trouble. If you have to convey a piece of your real mind about your nemesis, it was better done with a preamble; like "how highly we admire him or her". And just in case you had no idea about the status of a case in your charge, "it is under our active consideration" would save many a blush. I still believe we would be better served with some straight talk; Pakistan more than all the others.

If we, for example, were to wish the Afghan Taliban -- our best bet to get the region rid of the US-led Alliance -- all the luck, anyone believing in stating things "as they are" would be much impressed. If we could also add that since many of our troubles began with the arrival of the foreign forces, we were now willing to facilitate their departure, some of them would jump at the offer.

And just in case we did not have the courage to convey that a number of groups targeting us were sponsored by our so called allies, we could always leak an odd document to the Wikileaks. Indeed, it would be nice if countries like China, Russia and Iran also expressed their discomfiture with NATO's meddling with the New Great Game.

The Brits too would be delighted. They would dump all the debris of the last decade on the senior partner, hang some of its poodles now under trial (like they used to execute generals and admirals who lost wars in faraway places), and make up with their old friends, the Afghan Tribesmen.

The Americans too could benefit. They will finally get a chance to get even with "Big Money" that has run the country to bankruptcy, mortgaged its future to China, and created the most expensive war machine in history that routinely loses to ragtag warriors in this postmodern warfare.

And who knows, India may also concede that the real reason it was dragging its feet on reconciliation with Pakistan was that the price for peace exceeded the cost of status quo.

On second thought, this conversion to the true faith does not seem to be a good idea. It would deprive us of all the fun in conducting international relations, of running with the hare and hunting with the hound, and in letting our emissaries run wild in pursuit of refining diplomatic doublespeak.

In due course, Mr Cameron too would give up his new found enthusiasm for calling a spade a spade; latest, when the former US Defense Secretary William Cohen reminds him of the lesson he learned from an illustrious British diplomat, Lord Robertson: "now that you have joined the circus, learn to ride on two horses".

When the Prime-Minister was admonishing us for looking "both ways", his Indian hosts should have recalled what their own "showman of the century" taught them about life: "it is a circus, in which one must move and look in all directions".

Double-crossers!

-- Asad Durrani

Fareed Zakaria's dramatic rebuke of the Anti-Defamation League for opposing a mosque at the Ground Zero construction site replacing the 9-11 destroyed World Trade Center in New York raises obvious questions about who else has been honored by the ADL and how these recipients feel about the high profile controversy.

As he explains in his commentary above, Zakaria is not just hitting ADL on the head but rather returning the Humphrey Medal and $10,000 prize as an effort to encourage the organization to regain its credibility by recognizing that it made a mistake. This is a principled move by Zakaria and holds open the hope that ADL will pivot back towards the ethical track it has long been on.

I don't necessarily believe in follow-the-leader behavior and don't know if other recipients of the Humphrey Medal would be in the same position as Zakaria to easily return a large cash prize years after the fact. But knowing how other recipients feel about the ADL controversy and the Cordoba mosque could be instructive and important.

Barack Obama is occasionally photographed carrying a weighty and important book around with him. One of those books -- which he seemed to carry around for nearly a year (it is a very long book at 738 pages) -- was Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 by my New America Foundation colleague Steve Coll.

Another book that Obama took very seriously and had his pic snapped with is Fareed Zakaria's The Post-American World.

What Obama likely learned from Coll's book is that Afghanistan would be a tough grind, one that America couldn't easily walk away from without running the risk that the drama in that region will come knocking on America's door if not dealt with. What the President learned from Zakaria is that the tools of American power are severely diminished, that enormous global doubts exist about the United States and its future course, and that foes and allies alike are not doubling down on American leadership but are rather placing new bets.

I just received an email from a leading public intellectual on US foreign policy who just returned from Israel and Palestine and reported that there were "construction cranes all over Ramallah."

The source commented that Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is getting something right. According to the source, he's building up the state even before there is a State.

I worry that what goes up can be blown up either by those left out of the political equation inside the Palestinian scene or be blown up through Israel incursions, but I remain cautiously hopeful that the infrastructure and urban development continue.

On another front a friend from the American Task Force on Palestine alerted me to this new resource for those interested in documents and materials related to Palestine state-building. This is the link.

-- Steve Clemons

Israeli media is reporting that former Clinton administration Secretary of Health and Human Services and University of Miami President Donna Shalala was "humilitated" at Ben Gurion International Airport. What makes matters a bit more complicated for Israel is that she was there to help protest the "academic boycott" of Israel.

Secretary Shalala was held for some two and a half hours in her view because she had a Lebanese last name, was not apparently reported in a VIP registration system, and had no "handlers" from Israeli organizations assisting her.

Deputy Foreign Minister and former Israel Ambassador to the US Danny Ayalon has "agreed that a new protocol will be drafted that will keep incidents to a minimum."

But this should not be just about VIP treatment in Israel. This kind of incident occurs in the United States frequently as well as Israel, and probably in other countries. Stories abound not just about time delays but about the gruff treatment that US customs officials handle those they hold back.

I wrote some time ago about the US Customs treatment of German Green Party Chairman Cem Oezdemir at Dulles Airport -- and when traveling through much of the Middle East, I constantly hear about VIPs and just regular folks who succeeded in getting visas nonetheless being subjected to equivalent forms of "humiliation" as Shalala apparently received while in Israel.

When I have been in Israel on my own and not under official sponsorship, I too have been subjected to pretty serious scrutiny. I once answered a question honestly that added an hour or so to my time. The young lady security screener asked (as I was departing Israel), "what place of worship do you belong to? a church in your community?" I responded, "I don't do religion." Red flag.

That said, I was treated with great respect by the Israeli screeners who frequently apologized for how long the search of my bags and perhaps my past were taking. But they were the epitome of politeness -- and I got through.

I went to St. John's Episcopal right across from the White House after this trip -- just so I could claim it next time in Israel -- but there is a deeper problem about the treatment of folks at borders, particularly the American border that I hope those angered by the Shalala case think about.

While many may be justifiably irritated by ethnic profiling and screening at Israel's airport, the spotlight should equally be held on US airports.

-- Steve Clemons

Is it possible that even the center-right tilting viewing audience of Fox news programs is also open to significant upgrades of gay civil rights? That is what a surprising new, unscientific survey of a Fox web audience seems to be showing.

With pleasure, I direct you to this interesting Fox News online poll in which at the time of this posting 300,499 votes had been cast.

The poll poses the following issue and question:

A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that Prop. 8, California's gay marriage ban is unconstitutional. Do you agree with the judge's decision?

Kudos to Fox for asking this important question straightforwardly.

Although Fox notes that this is not a scientific poll, the response thus far strongly affirms the decision by Judge Vaughn Walker to strike down the California anti-same sex marriage Proposition 8.

Republican California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has now filed a brief with the courts calling for gay marriages to immediately resume.

Here are the current responses to the Fox poll:

Yes -- Prop. 8 violates the Constitution. 71.1% (213,547 votes)

No -- Marriage is an institution between a man and a woman. I don't care what the judge thinks about the Constitution. 24.8% (74,455 votes)

I'm not sure but shouldn't the voters views count for something? 3.6% (10,812 votes)

Other (leave a comment). 0.6% (1,685 votes)

Total Votes: 300,499

I have mixed feelings about online polls, but I voted in this one.

No matter which side of the issue you find yourself on, I'd encourage you to vote in this poll given the very large number of participants (you can only vote once).

-- Steve Clemons

CNN show host and Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria has returned $10,000 and an award he was presented by the Anti-Defamation League in 2005 after ADL's opposition to a mosque at the rebuilt World Trade Center site in New York.

This is exceptional leadership on an important moral issue that I want to salute. We don't see people of Fareed Zakaria's stature taking stands that often as they tend to run from risk rather than embrace it.

This from a report at Huffington Post:

"Five years ago, the ADL honored me with its Hubert H. Humphrey First Amendment Freedoms Prize," Zakaria writes in next week's Newsweek. "I was thrilled to get the award from an organization that I had long admired. But I cannot in good conscience keep it anymore. I have returned both the handsome plaque and the $10,000 honorarium that came with it. I urge the ADL to reverse its decision. Admitting an error is a small price to pay to regain a reputation."

We at TWN urge Abe Foxman and ADL to change course as well.

-- Steve Clemons

Some Republicans and Democrats can get their heads together now and then.

When I had the privilege of working for Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) in the US Senate, I had just moved over from serving as founding Executive Director of the Nixon Center for Peace & Freedom, later renamed (thankfully) "The Nixon Center".

Senator Bingaman at the time, along with his chief of staff Patrick Von Bargen, were asking key questions about the structure of international trade and finance and why such large bilateral deficits were building between the US and respectively Japan and China. University of Chicago-trained neoclassical economists regularly parroted the line that bilateral deficits were "meaningless" and would be balanced out over time with other global trade partners -- and would on a bilateral basis rise and fall, appearing and disappearing in a highly fluid global economic environment.

Bingaman's and Von Bargen's questions then are even more relevant today -- and given the time on the clock since, it's clear that the economists who argued that deficits were meaningless or that a job is a job is a job -- whether working as a wallet maker or a nano-technology app developer -- were wrong.

But Jeff Bingaman, even though skeptical about how the global economy was working in real rather than ideological terms, never turned his back on international engagement. In 1996, Bingaman, Von Bargen and I traveled to Japan, South Korea, China, and other parts of Asia. This, then, was an annual trip supplemented by his personal trips to Guatemala and trips to Europe, Russia and more. Bingaman, now Chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy, remains deeply engaged and interested in international affairs.

And while most Senators and Congressman make a point of pushing 95% of their available press time towards the Bartlesville news outlet (in the case of Oklahoma) over the demands of the Yomiuri, Le Monde, Al Jazeera, or the People's Daily, Bingaman is one that does make time for international media.

The Nixon Center as well was stacked with big personalities who were then and remain deeply committed to America's engagement in global affairs. While the Nixon Center is actually fastidiously non-partisan and has key Dems and Republicans engaged with it, it's hard to hide all of its Republican stripes when in fact the institution's inspiration and founder was a powerful two-term winning Republican President of the United States.

My point is that there are Democrats and Republicans -- lots of them -- committed to robust international engagement, to smart foreign aid, and to coherent and sensible U.S. international public diplomacy.

But just as when I worked for Bingaman in the Senate and there were some Democrats and more Republicans who looked at having a passport as a political liability, many in the Tea Party movement are a manifestation of a similar pugnacious nationalism that disdains international institutions and US engagement abroad.

One of the major bipartisan NGOs committed to internationalism in Washington is the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition. I attended the USGLC's gala dinner last year featuring NBC's Andrea Mitchell and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

But the guy who really impressed me was the charismatic Republican Congressman from Illinois, Aaron Schock -- who went on stage and made a case as strong as any liberal internationalist I have heard for the hard core national interest reasons that the U.S. should support global affairs and engagement -- and yes, foreign aid budgets.

Aaron Schock is a serious player on the way up -- and too many are distracted by his better than average looks and youth. I didn't support his approach to Honduras (for the most part) that he seemed to have jointly worked out with Senator Jim DeMint -- but that is beside the point. Schock is thinking hard about smart policy, not just coasting with his new found power and privileges in Washington.

If the USGLC can bring Hillary Clinton and the Republican House Deputy Whip together to sing from similar playbooks, then I have time for this private sector initiative to promote public support for international engagement.

If you are in DC (and if not, I am sure that there will be "live streaming" that I will arrange to have run here at TWN), you might want to attend the annual USGLC 2010 Washington Conference (registration information here) that takes place September 28-29, 2010 at Washington's Grand Hyatt.

I would support this meeting whether I was speaking or not -- but I happen to be on the program along with NBC Meet the Press' David Gregory, Under Secretary of the Treasury Lael Brainard, US AID Administrator Rajiv Shah, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, and the indefatigable Joshua Rogin -- who writes Foreign Policy's "The Cable".

-- Steve Clemons

This just in from my friends at UPI:

'Oldest' man actually died 32 years ago

TOKYO, Aug. 5 (UPI) -- A man thought to be Tokyo's oldest resident at 111 years old actually died more than 30 years ago and was left to mummify in the family home, a report said.

Officials discovered the body of Sogen Kato in a room in an apartment in the city's Adachi Ward and believe his family may have kept his death quiet so it could continue receiving his pension benefits, Tokyo's Mainichi Daily News reported Thursday.

Family members told officials the man shut himself in the room in 1978 after telling them he wanted to become a "living Buddha," the report said. Instead of being more than a century old, Kato was probably 79 years old when he died.

His family continued to receive pension benefits of about 18.5 million yen ($215,000) from the time he died until his death was discovered. A transportation official who visited the home every year for 17 years to deliver a free pass said she was never allowed to see Kato.

"What a sad world it is when people can overlook the death of someone who is not living alone as an elderly person but in a family," the unnamed transportation official told Mainichi.

(collection of photos from passports of individuals suspected in the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh)

This just in from CNN:

-- Alleged Israeli agent to be tried in Germany over charges relating to the murder of a Hamas leader in Dubai.

G. John Ikenberry has written some of the most impressive work I have seen on how world powers -- no matter how powerful -- can see their power "bounded" by others in the international system.

This seems to be happening to the United States -- but also to Israel.

This is what I wrote about the assassination of Hamas military wing commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in February 2010.

-- Steve Clemons

While I'm not surprised that the Pentagon has barred Michael Hastings from a previously approved "embed", they are not handling this well and are messing up again.

The President and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates should intervene and order the Pentagon to invite Michael Hastings back into the embed fold.

This from Mike Allen's Playbook in Politico this morning:

BULLETIN -- Michael Hastings, the Rolling Stone contributing editor who wrote "The Runaway General," tells Mika [Brzezinski]: "Unfortunately, I recently received a letter from the public affairs staff denying me access to an embed that had been approved in June. ... I was scheduled to go on this embed in September. I just received a letter that said I was now DISapproved from going on that embed with the 101st Airborne. So I think that was a very unfortunate decision that was a direct result of the article about General McChrystal."

Hastings played a vital national service in exposing the toxic disdain some in McChrystal's command had for their US government partners in Afghanistan as well as for allies.

Allowing the Pentagon to continue to block Hastings reinforces the notion that he was the bad guy in this -- not the person who was fired by the President of the United States.

Note to National Security Council team -- this is one you should turn around.

It's not wise to punish the media who actually helped bring vital information to the nation and to the White House. Had McChrystal's team continued to operate, tensions between the key U.S. partners in Afghanistan would have become even more destructive.

-- Steve Clemons

America and Japan: the cutest military alliance in the whole world.

Occasional blogger Gen Kanai sent me this fascinating note referencing a CNNGo post by Matt Alt about manga cartoon love and the US-Japan security relationship.

From Gen Kanai:

This is pretty amazing.

For years, foreigners have tittered over the Japan Self-Defense Forces' cuddly mascot character, Prince Pickles.

But now the United States military has upped the ante by producing an entire manga-style comic book celebrating the strategic relationship between the two nations.

Could this be the beginning of a new era of "mutually assured cuteness?"

Entitled Our Alliance; A Lasting Partnership and available for free download from the U.S. Forces Japan website, it casts the politically charged relationship as a metaphor in which a cuter-than-cute little boy named Usa (get it?) visits the home of his equally cuter-than-cute Japanese friend Arai Anzu (say it aloud: "alliance.")

You can see the manga here.

It's unfortunately only in Japanese but the visuals express a lot.

Gen

The zinger in CNNGo's Matt Alt's great snip is:

"Our Alliance" skirts any discussion of protests or criticism, casting the relationship in an almost blindingly positive light. Helpful little Usa scoots around Arai's home stomping on cockroaches and extolling the "efficiency" of Japan's work alongside the more powerful United States.

The only question is, if this is all a metaphor, who or what precisely do those cockroaches represent? Perhaps that will be answered in the follow-up issues, which are due to come out over the course of 2010.

-- Steve Clemons

Nearly two and a half million other views have seen this -- but I had not.

The Toshiba Space Chair Project?

Make sure you watch until the very end.

Will be interesting to see how China beats this.

-- Steve Clemons

Hat tip to Gen Kanai for this and his excellent blog.

The Bilerico Players have put together this slightly odd -- but highly informative -- animated exchange between a mocked-up Judge Vaughn Walker and a legal counsel supporting the anti-same sex marriage Proposition 8, which was Judge Walker struck down.

Worth the seven minutes.

-- Steve Clemons

University of Vermont Political Science Professor F. Gregory Gause, III, writing at the Foreign Policy/Middle East Channel, is pessimistic about Saudi Arabia King Abdallah's efforts to woo Syria away from Iran and reconstitute the Riyad-Cairo-Damascus Arab triangle.

Gause argues that the Arabs' divergent threat perceptions vis-vis both Iran's regional ambitions and the best way to bring pressure to bear on Israel will prevent collective action.

He concludes that:

The recent hopes for a revival of the Arab solidarity of the 1970s are therefore destined to be dashed on all scores. King Abdallah is playing the long game with Syria, hoping over time to move it away from its alliance with Iran. (After failing in his earlier policy, in conjunction with the Bush Administration, of isolating and pressuring Assad.) But until there is a fundamental reassessment in Damascus about its regional role, Arab cooperation is bound to be a limited, issue-specific, and a short-term phenomenon. That means that no one should expect any significant all-Arab initiatives on the Arab-Israeli peace process any time soon. It also means that Iran will not face a unified Arab front in opposition to the expansion of its regional influence or to its nuclear ambitions.

-- Ben Katcher

(click image for larger version)

Jonathan Guyer is a program associate at the New America Foundation/Middle East Task Force and the official cartoonist of The Washington Note. He blogs at Mideast by Midwest.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen certainly caught our attention on the Sunday talkies. All options with regard to Iran "on the table."

-- Jonathan Guyer