Hamas is finding Damascus too rough and is leaving the Syrian capital. That might be one of the signs of the end of the regime. 

But don't be counting your chickens quite yet. John McCreary writes in NightWatch that, "Expect more Iranian support for Damascus and more Iranian Islamic Republican Guard Corps personnel to show up in Syria and in southern Lebanon. The Iranians do not appear ready to abandon Syria yet."

Meanwhile, Egypt looks like it might be moving into Phase II of its revolution.

This is the best article I've read about how to think about American moves in the war in Afghanistan.

Peter Feaver writes elsewhere in FP that "Obama's foreign policy successes have come when he has followed Bush policies; his failures have come when he has struck out on his own." (Peter is a friend of mine, and also one of the Shadow Governors -- I am proposing that the bong be made their official emblem.) 

Yes -- just look at all the countries Obama has invaded pre-emptively on false information about weapons of mass destruction!

That apparently is Defense Secretary Panetta's plan for war termination in Afghanistan. That's what I take away from this Request for Proposals.

The Army recently did a good book on how wars end, and I'm currently reading Gideon Rose's book on the same subject. But I suspect that what we are seeing in Afghanistan (and to a degree in Iraq) is something altogether different: The privatization of our conflicts, at least on the ground. In the air, the trend is more from manned to unmanned aircraft -- could we call this the de-personification of the air war?

By Joseph Sarkisian

Best Defense department of politico-military affairs

Lately a lot of journalists have been pointing out the neo-conservative return from the grave manifested in Mitt Romney's foreign policy team. The list is a who's who of advisors under the most recent Bush administration -- 15 of the 22 of them -- including six former members of the "Project for a New American Century." If you recall, this was the same group of policy "experts" that advocated the war in Iraq with confidential reasons to bust OPEC by privatizing Iraq's oil infrastructure, removing the Saudis' ability to set prices, and flooring the price of crude.

Clearly this never came to pass and Iraq has remained a member of OPEC. However, although the neo-conservatives lost in their war with the State Department and oil industry to privatize Iraq, a campaign against Iran would give them another shot.

While conflict with Iran may partly be attributed to its nuclear program, it isn't the whole story. Just like with the Baathist regime, the powers that were and may be again are unhappy that an authoritarian regime with a hatred for Israel to boot is having so much say in the price America pays for a barrel of oil. In 2003, the surface motivation was about Iraqi WMD, and today the surface motivation is about Iranian WMD. This unsubstantiated fear proved to be the catalyst the OPEC-busters needed to move on Iraq. That same catalyst could be used to move on Iran.

Iran is much more easily vilified simply because it actually has a nuclear program, unlike Iraq did. Therefore public support for a campaign to make sure Iran never develops a nuclear weapon is winning against non-intervention. But the neo-conservative constituency isn't appeased with the setting back of Iran's nuclear program. In fact, some of them advocate for full-scale regime change.

The neo-cons moan over the uselessness of sanctions, and on this point they may be correct, but not for the right reasons. The issue as they state it is Iran having adequate time to put together a nuclear device. This may or may not be the case, but it certainly is the case that regardless of the Ayatollah's plans for his fissile material, the rhetoric keeps oil prices high, as potential kinetic conflict over the issue becomes more of a possibility.

A back and forth approach to ceding some ground on the nuclear issue keeps the price of oil up, which is good strategy for Iran. However, if prices get too high, the regime may effectively commit suicide if a conservative White House loses its temper. Therefore, the current price of oil is close to ideal since it keeps Iran in the sweet spot of dividing the world over whether or not to intervene. Although sanctions are appearing to hurt the Iranian economy, higher oil prices will benefit them if they can strike a deal with China and India to buy what the EU leaves sitting on the tanker.  They'll have six months to figure it out.

None of this bodes well for neo-cons who understand that this back and forth will keep oil expensive for the foreseeable future. Therefore, a plea for regime change in Iran would make sense in their eyes, just like it did in 2003. And why not? Public opinion seems to favor at least intervention at this point, Israel is more than happy to help out, and Iran is easier to sell than Iraq ever was. It wouldn't be hard to put Mitt Romney on a plan to privatize Iran's oil infrastructure given the opportunity; he is a businessman after all.

But as we've seen, neo-conservatives aren't much interested in the consequences of action; only the consequences of inaction by others that they believe are too "soft" on Iran, which is pretty much everyone but themselves. They fail to realize that Iran is not Iraq and that it can defend itself. Regime change doesn't happen from the air. Considerable ground forces would be necessary for such a campaign, and Iran has a trained insurgency at the ready that would make Iraq look like Grenada. This would undoubtedly drive the price of oil skyward for an extended period of time, just like it did in 2003.

One entity may be powerful enough to oppose such grand plans (and sadly it isn't the American voters): Big Oil. They shut down the plan to privatize Iraq in 2003 and may be able to do the same thing in Iran if there were an attempt to do so. No OPEC means more competition in the market place, which means lower prices.  Translate that to lower profit for oil companies and one can see the connection. Keeping oil in the ground makes more sense to an oilman than taking it out when there is excess supply.

It may be rhetoric in an election year as some have posited, but Israel's involvement and the alignment of many on Romney's foreign policy team with AIPAC and Israeli interests points to a long lasting commitment to taking on Iran in one way or another, whether it is good for American interests or not. Only time will tell, but it is very hard to believe that given the chance, the neo-conservatives wouldn't try and bust OPEC to achieve their goal of reclaiming the almighty American empire one more time.

Joseph Sarkisian is a graduate student in international relations at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, where he is also a teaching assistant for political science. The focus of his research is U.S.-Iranian relations.

From a recent speech by Gen. David Petraeus (USA, ret.) to the Reserve Officers Association:

Speaking of reservists, up front I wanted to share with you a story from a recently declassified operation that took place in the Pacific Ocean area, an operation that, for the press, has been unreported until today. During this particular operation, one of our best reserve units was deployed to perform a sensitive mission on a desert island where they had to hire some local inhabitants as scouts and translators. It turned out, however, that the locals were cannibals.

So the commander, who in his civilian life was an expert in foreign languages and in dealing with different cultures and…made a point of speaking to them before the contract was finalized. "You're part of our team now," he told the cannibals in their language. "We'll pay you well for your service, and we'll allow you to eat any of our rations. But please, he said -- please don't eat any of our troopers."

Well, the cannibals responded reassuringly and promised not to eat any of the unit's soldiers, and they then shook hands with the commander and went to work.

Everything was going smoothly until about four weeks later, when the commander called the cannibals together for a meeting. "You're all working hard," he said, "and I'm very pleased with your performance. However, one of our sergeants has disappeared. Do any of you know what happened to him?"

The cannibals all shook their heads and professed to have no idea of the missing sergeant's whereabouts.

After the commander left, however, the leader of the cannibals turned to the others and asked sternly, "Which one of you idiots ate the sergeant?"

The cannibals all hung their heads until finally one of them meekly put his hand in the air and said, "I did."

"You fool," the head cannibal shouted. "For four weeks we've been eating lieutenants, captains and even majors -- [laughter] -- and no one noted anything - [laughter, applause] -- and then you had to go and eat a sergeant." [Laughter]

By John H. Haas

Best Defense department of sectarian affairs

When we think about how the Iraq war upset whatever once passed for equilibrium in that part of the Middle East, most of us think in terms of the boost it gave to Iran by removing a historic enemy. But there were and are other players intimately concerned about the consequences of the changes we initiated in Iraq, as I was reminded of last week as I did a little Googling into some of the nooks and crannies of the last decade.  This, for instance, got my attention:

"But if a phased [U.S.] troop withdrawal does begin, the violence will escalate dramatically.  In this case, remaining on the sidelines would be unacceptable to Saudi Arabia. To turn a blind eye to the massacre of Iraqi Sunnis would be to abandon the principles upon which the kingdom was founded. It would undermine Saudi Arabia's credibility in the Sunni world and would be a capitulation to Iran's militarist actions in the region.  To be sure, Saudi engagement in Iraq carries great risks -- it could spark a regional war. So be it: The consequences of inaction are far worse."  

Those ominous words were written by Nawaf Obaid, national security adviser to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, late in 2006.  This was, you will recall, when popular discontent with the war was cresting at the mid-term elections and the Iraq study group was expected soon to recommend a U.S. draw-down; it was also shortly before President Bush announced the surge.

We all know what happened. U.S. troops heroically redoubled their efforts to provide security in Iraq, the horrific violence of 2006-2007 eventually subsided, and Iraqis were given the space to arrive at some kind of political reconciliation which would, it was hoped, allow the nation to proceed without tumbling into the apocalypse we'd witnessed -- and they'd suffered -- over the past several years. That broader political aim was not fully achieved.

What if the period 2007-2010 wasn't a transition for Iraq, but a pause? What if the dynamics that gave us a sectarian civil war are still very much present, and Iraq spirals once again toward apocalypse?

The Saudis aren't any less concerned about the Sunni population of Iraq now than they were in 2006, and Saudi-Iraqi relations are simply dismal. If Sunnis appear to be the targets of sectarian cleansing once again, will the Saudis be any less willing to risk a regional war?  And then?

Iran needs your prayers, it's true, but save a few for the Saudis too.

John H. Haas teaches history at Bethel College in Indiana. Or maybe Cleveland.

I've been reading Peter Schifferle's America's School for War: Fort Leavenworth, Officer Education and Victory in World War II. Generally I found it kind of dull, feeling a bit like a biography written only about what a person did between 9 and 5 every day.

That said, I was intrigued and persuaded by his basic conclusion: Senior American commanders were much more competent in World War II than in World War I, he says, especially in the difficult art of coordinating the combat arms (infantry, artillery, armor, aviation) to break through enemy lines and then exploit that breakthrough. The reason for this competence, he says, was the education they received at Fort Leavenworth in the interwar period. He quotes the comment of German Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, who after being captured in 1945 reportedly said, "We cannot understand the difference in your leadership in the last war and in this. We could understand it if you had produced one superior corps commander, but now we find all of your corps commanders good and of equal superiority."