Iraq government loses its nerve

What sort of deal did the U.S.-backed al-Maliki government in Iraq offer renegade Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to get him to pull his forces off the streets of Basra and other cities? Probably the least of it is that al-Maliki's Shiite supporters will stop arresting members of al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia, whose cooperation in the past year has helped the government maintain the appearance of authority. The deal may also include the release of militiamen being held without charges in Iraqi jails. While the deal preserves al-Maliki's government for now, this past week's failed attack on the Mahdi Army has revealed how weak the government is, even with billions of dollars of U.S. support. The attack on al-Sadr's forces did not dislodge them from Basra and other southern Iraq cities but instead made them even more popular. In the Mahdi Army stronghold of Sadr City, a Baghdad district, al-Sadr supporters handed out sweets to celebrate, according to the Associated Press. A jump in the number of daily attacks on the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad, the government center where diplomats are located, demonstrated just how tenuous the government's control over the country actually is. One of al-Maliki's top security officials was killed in a mortar attack, the AP said.

Slow progress in the Middle East

The sharp divisions among Arab states highlighted Saturday at the opening of the 22-nation Arab League in Damascus, Syria, reflect the advance of Western ideology in the politically backward region. At least 10 Arab countries kept their heads of state home for the start of the summit, which opened with a speech by Syrian President Bashar Assad, to protest Syria's role in Lebanon and other Middle East hotspots, according to the Associated Press. Assad, whose regime is deeply involved in Lebanon's political crisis, is closely aligned with Iran and is believed to be supporting the Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist groups, threatened to withdraw the Arab League's unrealistic six-year-old peace proposal to Israel. Heads of state from Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, Bahrain, Oman, Morocco and Somalia, which have strong relations with the United States, did not attend the summit, and Lebanon did not send any diplomats at all. The division is a welcome change from the rabidly anti-Israel positions most Arab states have taken in the past. But not all Arab states were even that flexible. In his speech to the summit, Assad denied that Syria was interfering in Lebanon and said the Arab League proposal, which offers peace with Israel in exchange for withdrawal to pre-1967 borders and the creation of a Palestinian state, would not be on the table forever. It's no wonder Israel has refused to accept the proposal, except as a starting point for talks. "Peace will not come except through withdrawal from occupied Arab land and giving back (Arab) rights," Assad said, according to the Associated Press. Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa suggested that Arab foreign ministers meet this summer to evaluate the Arab-Israeli peace process. "We must know in which direction we are moving," Moussa said. "If there is progress, we will welcome it. If there is not, then Arabs may have to take painful positions." U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is reportedly headed to the region to meet with Israeli and Arab leaders.

Getting out cheap

Stepped up fighting across Iraq this week, particularly in Basra and Baghdad, further illustrates how clueless U.S. policymakers have been in the five-year-old conflict. The United States allowed close-ally Great Britain to withdraw most of its forces from Basra, the center of Iraq's oil industry, and turn control over the Iraq's oil-rich south to Iraqi security forces. Now, it seems, those security forces are no match for the Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army or a number of other Shite militias now controlling Basra's streets. Hundreds of Iraqis have been killed. An offensive ordered by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to regain control appears to have made no progress, leaving a huge power vacuum that U.S. troops are going to have to fill. How could the United States have miscalculated so badly, yet again, five years into the war? Even Baghdad has again become a battlefield, with daily attacks on the fortified Green Zone that houses Iraqi and U.S. officials. President Bush called the start of the Basra offensive a "defining moment" in the Iraq conflict, but it looks like another "mission accomplished" moment instead.

Who likes Bush proposal?

The alphabet soup agency names are confusing, but U.S. residents can be sure of one thing if President Bush gets his way on a proposed overhaul of regulations overseeing the financial services industry — more will be less. The purpose of proposals to switch regulatory power from one agency to another and to expanding the power of the Federal Reserve is not to improve government oversight but to do the opposite — to insulate Wall Street financial powerhouses from the wrath of the people affected by their misdeeds. Removing the power to regulate Wall Street from the Securities and Exchange Commission, a government agency, and transferring it to the Federal Reserve, which is independent of the government, is the centerpiece of the Bush proposal, and it's not hard to see why. The plan is being sold as a way to give the Federal Reserve more power to control what happens on Wall Street, where respected companies are being steamrolled by the credit crisis that brought down the mortgage industry. But how is reducing government control of the economy going to increase government's ability to oversee the economy? It isn't, and it's not intended to. The collapse of Bear Stearns, the nation's fifth-largest investment bank, which had to rescued by a government-arranged buyout by JP Morgan Chase, is a warning of what is ahead. Because while bureaucrats and money managers bicker of whether the $2 per share price of the buyout was ridiculous or not, thousands of workers are losing the retirement savings they spent decades accumulating. The financial sector is backing the Bush proposal — like the major players would ever support increased government scrutiny. That alone should tell everybody what they need to know.

Kenya growing pains

Parties to the historic power-sharing deal that settled a deadly political crisis that brought Kenya to the brink of anarchy have come too far to be sidetracked now. But negotiators for President Mwai Kibaki's Party for National Unity and Prime Minister-designate Raila Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement have stopped talking in a deadlock over the makeup of a coalition government. The disagreement apparently concerns the painstaking allocation of cabinet seats between the two parties and the public offering of shares in Safaricom, a top mobile phone operator in east Africa. Former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan of Ghana, who mediated the power-sharing deal that stopped weeks of tribal violence in normally calm Kenya cities, has been summoned to help the parties return to negotiations. Annan is negotiating with both sides, the Reuters international news service reported Thursday. More than 1,200 people died in ethnic violence after Kibaki's re-election in December in an election marred by a problematic vote count. The deal with opposition leader Odinga took power from the presidency by creating post of prime minister.

Seemed like a good idea

Is this where the War on Terror is headed? Thursday's news out of Los Angeles that a woman was demanding an apology from the U.S. Transportation Security Agency for forcing her to remove nipple rings before she boarded a flight from Lubbock, Texas, in February raises troubling questions. Is that really what any of us want the government to be doing? The fact that airport personnel forced the woman, 37-year-old Mandi Hamlin, to remove one of her nipple rings with pliers before permitting her to board illustrates the ludicrousness of the government's position. Certainly the TSA has policies on how to handle sensitive situations — humiliating the customer, whose taxes help pay for the agency and its employees, is certainly not one of them. These airport baggage inspectors were making up the rules as the situation unfolded, not following established guidelines, and that's a sure way to lose the respect of the public. Give the government power and it always takes more. Remember the ban on bottled water? Law-abiding U.S. citizens tolerate a lot of insults in the interests of security these days — they practically can't go into a government building they paid for or meet a family member at an airport without submitting to a search. Fortunately, Hamlin has hired well-known Los Angeles attorney Gloria Allred, who will at least be able to make the agency squirm. In a written statement after the incident, the TSA said the threat of female terrorists hiding explosives on their bodies was increasing. "TSA is well aware of terrorists' interest in hiding dangerous items in sensitive areas of the body, therefore we have a duty to the American public to resolve any alarm we discover," the agency said. Maybe it's time to re-examine the rules of flying to take power away from the TSA, maybe even to eliminate it altogether, along with its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, and replace them with agencies more accountable to and respectful of the public.

The five tenors

Just what were those five former U.S. secretaries of state thinking yesterday when they encouraged President Bush to open a dialogue with Iran and to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center? Did they really think that reason was driving U.S. foreign policy? Don't they still read the newspaper? Colin Powell, who was Bush's first secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, James Baker III, Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright, all offered common sense suggestions to current world affairs complications when they spoke at a University of Georgia-sponsored forum in Athens. "One has to talk with adversaries," said Henry Kissinger, who served in the Nixon and Ford administrations. Baker served under the first President Bush and Albright and Christopher served under President Clinton. The five also said the closure of Guantanamo Bay, where suspected terrorists have been held for years without trial in violation of the Geneva Conventions, would help restore the tarnished international image of the United States. Thank you very much. But who were they talking to? Was this for the consumption of the general public? The Bush administration is certainly not listening.