Word on the street is Obama will head to an Arab capital for a major speech in his first 100 days. I doubt anyone in the United States will care much one way or the other, preoccupied as we are by our own economic problems, but that's not to say such a speech couldn't have a real effect in the Arab world. Rumor has it that the speech would take place in Cairo. Why not Baghdad? Here's how the New York Times's Helene Cooper explains it:

Why Cairo? It’s a matter of elimination. I called Ziad Asali, the president of the American Task Force on Palestine, to gauge his thoughts. “Damascus would be cool, except it would look as if he was rewarding the Syrians and it’s too soon for that,” Mr. Asali said.

True. Maybe in a year, if Syrian President Bashar al-Assad gets around to a land-for-peace deal with Israel. But for right now, I’m not really seeing Damascus as the spot for the big speech....

Baghdad? Definitely out-of-the-box, but it could appear to validate the Iraq war, which Mr. Obama opposed. Beirut? Too many Hezbollah members — Secret Service would flip its collective lid — and anyway, the Lebanese president has always been a Christian.

Tehran? Too soon for that. Amman? Been there, done that. Islamabad? Too dangerous. Ankara? Too safe. Plus the Turks aren’t going to be too crazy about being used for outreach to the Muslim world when they’re trying to join the European Union.

If one believes that there is some potential benefit to such a speech, and I'm skeptical but open to the possibility, is there a more compelling location for that speech to take place than in Baghdad? Who cares if it validates the war in Iraq? Obama is to be the President of the United States -- and he's already validated the war by packing his administration with those who supported it. In any event, doesn't Obama now share President Bush's objectives for Iraq, if not the same strategy for getting there. A speech in Baghdad would be a chance to make bipartisan this country's commitment to a stable and democratic Iraq. It would be a chance for Obama to assure those Iraqis who were hostile to President Bush and those who fear a new approach. And most of all, if Obama believes that his words may win hearts and minds, a speech in Baghdad could have the effect of saving American lives by further reducing the strain in relations between U.S. forces and the Iraqi people. How can Cooper be so flip about all that?

Likewise, is the only problem with a speech in Tehran merely that it is "too soon"? If Obama is allowed to speak freely in the capital of Iran and directly to the people of that country, he should go for it (imagine trying to strike the right balance in writing that speech). But does Cooper really believe that the Iranian government would allow Obama to speak so freely as he did in Berlin? Or that the people would be chanting O-ba-ma instead of death to America? Frighteningly, I think she does. Just as she thinks the only thing keeping Syria from a peace deal is that Assad hasn't gotten around to it yet.

As of last night, with 98 percent of votes recounted, the Franken campaign's internal numbers showed Franken leading Norm Coleman by 10 votes.

But Franken is ahead by 10 votes only if you assume (1) the Franken campaign's internal numbers--which Coleman's people dispute--are accurate and (2) that "133 mystery ballots that may or may not have disappeared in Minneapolis" turn up and give Franken a net gain of 46 votes.

Yesterday, in one Minneapolis precinct, 133 fewer ballots were counted than the number of votes reported on election night. It's not entirely clear if these ballots ever existed in the first place--election officials could have erred in their counting on election night--but the Franken camp is pushing for a "forensic search" to discover these ballots. If these 133 votes do not turn up, Franken--by his own campaign's estimation--is behind by about 36 votes.

The hand recount will end tomorrow, and then the state canvassing board will meet on December 16 to begin ruling on challenged ballots. If these 133 "missing ballots" are not found, the Franken campaign is likely to challenge the election results in court or in the U.S. Senate. The Franken camp is also likely to challenge election results if rejected absentee ballots are not included in the final count.

It's subscriber-only, but Edward Luttwak's critique of the American declinists is worth your time. Cliff's Notes version:

The future of both the United States and Europe will be shaped by their true strengths - private innovation on one side of the Atlantic, local and regional authenticity on the other - rather than the weaknesses of each that now generate fears of decline. The things that count in the race to the future are human capital, social trust and institutional coherence. The first requires not only excellence and innovation in education, but also openness in learning from others and in absorbing others into our own fold. The second requires balancing that openness with stability and community integration. And the third requires a dynamic combination of resilient federalism and subsidiarity - the shock absorbers needed to navigate safely a fast-paced globalized world. The United States and Europe are in a far better position in regard to all three assets than is any other society on the planet.

For further reading on the myth of American decline, be sure to check out Robert Kagan and Robert J. Lieber.

Hey, if you're not a rival he needs to neutralize, life can be tough:

The Massachusetts senator helped to launch Obama on the national stage. As his party's presidential nominee, Kerry chose Obama as the keynote speaker for the 2004 Democratic National Convention. Ever since then, Kerry did everything right by Obama.

He walked away from his own presidential dreams and embraced Obama's. He helped with fund-raising and organized a Web-based fight against the kind of negative campaigning that helped derail his own presidential bid. He also delivered a powerful speech when Democrats gathered in Denver to nominate Obama.

Both Kerry and Senator Edward M. Kennedy endorsed the Illinois senator at a critical point in his primary battle...

Kerry rolled to victory in the primary and general elections. Yet, even as he campaigned for a fifth term, Massachusetts politicians positioned themselves for the prospect of an open Senate seat. It was the natural political reaction to the widespread buzz that Kerry expected to be offered "something big" in an Obama administration.

However, soon after Election Day, Kerry went from being an alleged top contender for a Cabinet position to nowhere.

Update: A Republican recovering from shattered presidential dreams lands on his feet. Well, at least for this season.

Saxby Chambliss' flattening of Jim Martin, 57-43, Tuesday night in Georgia ensured the Democrats cannot get to a filibuster-proof 60 votes in the Senate, but what else did it do?

It changed the cost-benefit analysis for Democratic senators on jumping into the fray for Al Franken, whose close battle with Norm Coleman is meeting with mixed results in the courts, leading to speculation that the Democratic senate might decide the issue, ala Wyman vs. Durkin.

It's hard to imagine Obama, invested enough in his post-partisan image that he wouldn't risk it to stump for Martin, wanting the Senate to go to the mats for a 59th vote in what would surely be perceived as partisan overreach. Democratic senators up for reelection in 2010 will have to wonder whether gaining a foul-mouthed comedian through aggressive means will help their fortunes, especially when Chambliss' victory shows that Obama's coattails are shrinking:

The bottom line: The Obama campaign did a magnificent job of turning out black voters in rural and small-town counties in Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia for the November 4 election. But it was not able to replicate those results in the Georgia runoff. Black turnout pretty much matched white turnout in the inner Atlanta area, where black political organizations have been active for many years, but it failed to do so in the outer suburbs with increasing black majorities and in North Georgia counties with few blacks. Black turnout did match statewide levels in black-majority cities in southern Georgia, but not enough to outweigh similar white turnout in adjacent suburban counties. As the analysts at NBC News suggest, Obama coattails that were helpful to many newly elected Democrats in the South in November 2008 may not be so helpful to them in 2010 and any special elections that occur between now and then.

That suggests another hypothesis: that the Obama turnout effort among blacks may not be replicable. You can only vote to elect the first black president once.

Chuck Todd, speaking on "Morning Joe" this week about contacts with senior Dems, indicated even they are wary about opening the Hollywood floodgates with a Franken victory:

TODD: The concern is this on Franken. If Franken wins and, you know, who knows? When you are at the point they're in, it's a tie and it really goes down to how many votes are left to count and what gets counted and this and that. So it's a tie which tells you voters didn't want either guy. That's another whole story.

The concern according to a couple of Democrats on Franken was then everybody on the left on the hollywood left would try and run for office. You know, the Tim Robbinses. They were half-joking, but half-serious. There would be concern you can run anybody now. It's that easy to become a U.S. Senator or a governor, and that if Franken loses, it would be a little bit of a reality check for the Hollywood Left that, you know what? This isn't so easy. You can't just esopuse – just jump out and espouse little things and get elected.

“I can't overstate the impact she had down here,” Chambliss said during an interview Wednesday morning on Fox News.

“When she walks in a room, folks just explode,” he added. “And they really did pack the house everywhere we went. She's a dynamic lady, a great administrator, and I think she's got a great future in the Republican Party.”

Finally, James Taranto cheers a win for decency in politics, as Chambliss' win will put to rest the idea that he won in 2002 by attacking Max Cleland's patriotism:

Cleland was seeking a second term in 2002 when Chambliss ran against him. Chambliss criticized Cleland's voting record--specifically, his repeated votes against the legislation that created the Department of Homeland Security. Cleland and fellow Democrats objected to provisions in the law that gave the new department more flexibility vis-à-vis union work rules. Chambliss accused Cleland of cravenly pandering to special interests.

Democrats, unable to defend Cleland's position on the merits, falsely accused Chambliss of questioning Cleland's patriotism--and thereby introduced into the debate the notion that Cleland's patriotism was in question...

This year, Democrats hoped to exact revenge for Cleland's 2002 loss by defeating Chambliss. Had Martin prevailed, there's little doubt his fellow Democrats would have claimed vindication for their McCarthyite effort to smear Cleland as a man whose patriotism is in question. Chambliss's win therefore should be seen as a victory for civility and decency in politics.

Surely, the party of Obama the Political Healer can get behind that.

The next chairman, or any chairman, of the Republican National Committee must possess three skills: management ability, fundraising prowess, and press savvy. Given the current disarray of the party, it would seem obvious that management ability would be the most important of these three qualities. Unfortunately, the selection process -- a vote by members of the committee -- makes any assumption extremely dangerous. What one needs to keep in mind above all else in handicapping this race is that members of the committee tend to trust their own -- and that this election will make a Republican primary look like a vote by the United Nations General Assembly.

Those following the race closely have some confidence that the nature of the selection process will tilt things toward current Chairman Mike Duncan if he seeks reelection, as he seems likely to do. Duncan was a very successful fundraiser and a fine party manager. He would not provide a break with the past, and he would remain a weak advocate for the party with few television appearances, but there are those who believe that money is the key to future success, and Duncan can bring home the bacon.

The current field also includes two other committee members, South Carolina Chair Katon Dawson and Michigan Chair Saul Anuzis. Both are real contenders, and both have demonstrated a competency in management, but neither is a fundraising or media superstar. Michael Steele is the one guy currently in the race who is a media superstar, but he has other drawbacks. Steele is one of the best communicators the party has -- intelligent, patient, and principled in his conservatism. He will be a star either way this election shakes out, but there are worries about whether he would be a good fit as RNC chair. Steele was a lackluster fundraiser in Maryland, and he made no secret of the fact that he didn't enjoy that part of his job as Lt. Governor. Steele also claimed the endorsement of Newt Gingrich, a claim that Gingrich's people subsequently knocked down. This was a major miscue, and may have been the death of Steele's candidacy.

Which brings us to Mitt Romney. Romney has not expressed any desire to do the job, and the committee members have expressed no desire to see him run. Because of those two small problems, the odds that we see Romney as RNC chair are slim to none. Still, humor me. If the Republican party were a business, it would be General Motors, or maybe Ford if one were feeling more charitable. Like Ford, the Republican party is a failing business that could, with good management, a lot of money, and some new products, once again become profitable. There is no one in America who has a better record than Mitt Romney at turning around failing enterprises, there is no Republican who can better deliver a message, and there is no Republican (except Palin perhaps) who can raise as much money.

It strikes me that one of Romney's biggest problems in the 2008 primary, perhaps second only to having to contend with the McCain biography, was that it wasn't clear what he had ever done for Republican voters. He hadn't fought on the front lines in any of the party's major battles, he hadn't contributed anything to the party's philosophy. He seemed to be asking a lot of Republicans without having paid his dues. That's not true anymore, but Romney could earn a tremendous amount of good will were he to reform the party and help put together a successful 2010 election. And with Republicans having no other real power base, Romney would have the spotlight largely to himself in a time of economic crisis.

For Romney to win this election would be no easy feat, but if he pulled it off he just might save the party.

You got the feeling at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver that if Barack Obama were to win the White House, his party's first domestic policy priority would be universal health insurance. The financial crisis has changed that somewhat; now universal health care is Obama's number two domestic policy priority. Philip Klein helpfully explains why it will be much harder for conservatives to defeat Obamacare than it was to defeat HillaryCare:

The Washington Post reports that Tom Daschle, who hasn't even been formally named Secretary of Health and Human Services yet, is already engaging activists on the issue, asking for their input, and hoping build on the success that the Obama campaign had in mobilizing the grassroots during the campaign. This is not somebody who is taking the HHS job to manage its day-to-day bureaucracy.

Meanwhile, yesterday, America's Health Insurance Plans, the largest trade group of insurance companies, proposed its own universal health care plan, declaring that, "now is the time for health care reform." This is a stunning development, given that the insurance industry played a major role in the defeat of HillaryCare. In the proposal, insurers agree to cover individuals with pre-existing conditions, if the government imposes a mandate requiring that every American purchase health insurance. Meanwhile, to control costs, the group proposes "a public-private advisory group be created to provide specific policy recommendations to Congress on reducing health care costs" – which is similar to Daschle's idea of a Federal Health Board. They also endorse an expansion of S-CHIP.

The roughly $8 trillion the Bush administration has obligated so far to rescue the global financial system also makes it more likely that Obama will get some version of his universal health care plan. While such a plan will be expensive, and will likely grow only far more expensive in the future, the initial costs will pale in comparison to the trillions of dollars Bush and Paulson have poured into Wall Street.

Meanwhile, Obama's centrist economic and national security teams have the left feeling some buyer's remorse. To satisfy the left, Obama is likely to make a strong push for health care next year, as well as hand them the keys to the Labor Department, EPA, and all the various humanities programs (NEA, NEH, etc.). Our national checkup with Dr. Daschle is about due.

Marc Ambinder ran a post yesterday titled "Discourse Watch: Obama's Citizenship A Legit Topic?" Ambinder's question was prompted by a Townhall newsletter which featured a paid ad by a group that aims to prove, in court, that Barack Obama is not an American citizen, and is therefore ineligible to serve as President of the United States.

Ambinder is well respected by Republicans and Democrats, and is therefore one of a relatively few people in this business who can help set the bounds of a debate. If either party is pushing a piece of oppo that doesn't pass the smell test, partisans on either side are likely to run with it anyway, but a blog post from a guy like Ambinder can cool things off. Of course, in this case Townhall wasn't espousing any particular opinion, but publishing a paid ad. Most publications will accept paid ads from groups they disagree with -- as this magazine has done from time to time in accepting paid ads from groups like NARAL. It strikes me as unfair to imply, as Ambinder does, that there is some question as to whether Townhall shares this view.

But the Atlantic's own credibility has been damaged by the continuing "investigation" into the maternity of Trig Palin, known to the rest of us as Sarah Palin's son. The Atlantic raised these questions and tried to force the issue out of the fringe and into the mainstream for months. It was a line of inquiry that was clearly approved by the Atlantic's editors -- it could not have persisted so long without their consent -- and met with silence by folks like Ambinder.

Which is why it's so galling that Ambinder would post a "discourse watch." The Atlantic is still a great magazine with a lot of great content, and in some quarters it may still have the kind of credibility to decide what is or isn't an acceptable avenue of discussion, but it'll be a long time before the magazine can adjudicate such questions for conservatives.

The great Ken Levine reveals a long-kept secret:

This is very hard so I hope you’ll allow me a stumble or two. I’ve never actually admitted this in public. Deep breath. Okay. Here I go.

I can’t see 3-D.

It doesn’t work on me. Jesus, it’s terrifying seeing that in print. My astigmatisms combined with my far sidedness and depth perception issues prevent me from experiencing the full three-dimensional effect.

I was first stricken with this insidious misfortune as a child. Imagine, a mere lad, way too young to have developed coping mechanisms. Blissful and without a care in the world, I skipped into my local theater (Grauman’s Chinese), donned these nifty disposable anaglyph glasses and prepared to have the shit scared out of me by HOUSE OF WAX. But alas, my horror was not at the lifelike images popping off the screen, it was that images were so blurry I couldn’t distinguish Vincent Price from Phyllis Kirk.

Read the whole thing, as they say.

Classy Ed Rendell: "Hey, Janet Napolitano is perfect for that job because she has no life or family."

The RNC race: A look at six serious contenders.

UAW may briefly cease squeezing auto companies for billions to allow said auto companies to strangle the taxpayers for billions.

Greatest NYT headline: Campaign promises on ending war in Iraq now muted by reality. Nice of them to notice the distance between Obama's rhetoric and actions post-election, huh?

Taliban's monthly e-journal says extra troops in Afghanistan will just meet with more casualties.

States starting to sell excess assets in economic downturn.

How Robert Rubin helped sink Citigroup with impunity.

Why Israelis love Chabad.

The British National Health Service fears more dentists will quit, creating a shortage of dental care for Britons. Sometimes the jokes write themselves.

Dingy Harry Reid's political acumen on display again: "You can smell the tourists..."

USA Today reports:

U.S. combat deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan last month dropped to the lowest combined level since the United States began fighting the two wars more than five years ago.

Eleven American servicemembers died in combat in the conflicts in November. Seven others died in non-hostile incidents. The highest monthly total for combat deaths in both wars was 129 in November 2004.

Security in Iraq has improved dramatically over the past year, despite a number of high-profile bombing against civilian targets in recent weeks.

"If you look at the numbers of (Iraq) attacks overall, they are much, much lower than they have ever been since … 2003," Lt. Gen. Lloyd Austin, the No. 2 ranking U.S. commander in Iraq, told reporters Wednesday in Baghdad.

Afghanistan is a more complicated picture. There was only one U.S. combat death in November, the lowest level since February. However, 11 other coalition troops died there last month.

This morning I mentioned the difficulty Pakistan would have in turning over senior leaders from the Lashkar-e-Taiba, as the group has essentially become a state within the Pakistani state. Today, India expert Shlok Vaidya said Pakistan has the same problem dealing Dawood Ibrahim, the South Asian mafia don whose network is intertwined with terror groups throughout the region.

Unfortunately, the Pakistani state can’t take him out without incurring the wrath of Dawood’s network, which is extensively linked to every major terror outfit in the region and has played a prominent role in major attacks. In short, Dawood is to black globalization what AQ Khan was to nuclear proliferation (also a Pakistani resident).

This is the same challenge Pakistan faces across the board, especially with regards to LeT [Lashkar-e-Taiba]- the functioning state has been essentially slaved to its various nonstate elements. This is why Zardari has been forced to act as the mouthpiece for both his functioning state and the nonfunctioning areas that killed his wife - any other action results in his immediate failure. Musharraf faced the same dynamic.

"Black globalization" is defined as "the direct use of the black market for anti-state and competing state action."

There is one more problem that Pakistan has with turning over the likes of Ibrahim and other terror leaders. If the Pakistani government is seen to be caving to the demands of India, this would be political suicide for President Zardari, Prime Minister Gilani, and the Pakistan Peoples Party.

Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that chances of a nuclear or biological attack on a major city are now "better than even" according to a bipartisan congressional study. How will we avoid this catastrophe?

The United States should push for a global consensus banning states such as Iran and North Korea from adding to their stockpiles of enriched uranium and plutonium, while also ensuring supplies of commercial reactor fuel for countries that renounce nuclear weapons, the report says.

How many wars could have been avoided in this nation's history if Congress had only thought earlier of pushing for a "global consensus" to defeat emerging threats?

With 93 percent of votes recounted, the Minneapolis Star Tribune showed Norm Coleman ahead by 303 votes, but at a press conference today, the Franken campaign claimed that their candidate leads Coleman by 22 votes.

Why the different numbers?

The Franken campaign claims their figure is based on the assumption that election judges' original rulings on challenged ballots will be upheld at the end of the recount. At Minnesota's recount sites, election judges rule whether each ballot is a vote for Coleman, Franken, or neither candidate. If a Coleman or Franken representative challenges a ruling, that ballot will be reviewed by the state canvassing board. The board, comprised of four judges and the Minnesota secretary of state, will issue final calls on challenged ballots beginning December 16. So far, the Franken camp has challenged 2,922 ballots; the Coleman camp has challenged 3,095.

With these 6,000 challenged ballots deducted from the total vote count, Coleman is ahead by 303 votes. But the Franken camp believes that their candidate, had a 325-vote margin over Coleman among these 6,000 ballots.

Very few of the election judges' rulings will be overturned, so trusting these original rulings is a good metric to determine which candidate is ahead. But there are a couple reasons why Franken-fearing Americans shouldn't despair.

First, after today's Franken press conference, Coleman netted 36 votes in one Minneapolis precinct where 133 fewer ballots turned up than were reported on election day. (Yesterday, Franken picked up 37 votes in one precinct where 171 previously uncounted ballots were found.)

Second, it's not clear that the Franken campaign is accurately reporting how the election judges ruled on the 6,000 challenged ballots. Human error could be skewing the numbers. Or, as the Coleman camp claims, the Franken camp may have "invented" their lead to win the public relations battle and grease the skids for court challenges. (The Franken camp has already knowingly told a false story about an elderly stroke victim whose absentee ballot was rejected because her signature didn't match the one on file.) The Coleman campaign says their candidate is "well ahead" of Franken, but won't place their lead at a specific number of votes.

Jeb! to the Senate?

GM wants an $18 billion bailout; Republican senator Bob Bennett says the bailout probably won't happen.

Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen hangs up on Barack Obama (and Rahm Emanuel).

D.C. bars will stay open until 5 a.m. during Inauguration week.

Chicago will only plow snow off side streets during "weekday union business hours" to save money this winter.

Michael Scherer flags this quote from Dianne Feinstein in today's Times:

Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who will take over as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee in January, led the fight this year to force the C.I.A. to follow military interrogation rules. Her bill was passed by Congress but vetoed by President Bush.

But in an interview on Tuesday, Mrs. Feinstein indicated that extreme cases might call for flexibility. “I think that you have to use the noncoercive standard to the greatest extent possible,” she said, raising the possibility that an imminent terrorist threat might require special measures.

Afterward, however, Mrs. Feinstein issued a statement saying: “The law must reflect a single clear standard across the government, and right now, the best choice appears to be the Army Field Manual. I recognize that there are other views, and I am willing to work with the new administration to consider them.”

I, too, support use of noncoercive standard to the greatest extent possible, though obviously reasonable people can disagree about where that line is. Democrats -- or at least those who will be held accountable in the event of another terror attack against this country -- seem to suddenly grasp the complexity of this issue.

As Barack Obama campaigned for the presidency, he frustrated conservatives by staking out two sides on nearly every issue -- though not consecutively, as John Kerry did, but concurrently. Obama was opposed to telecom immunity in principle but he voted for it. On the war, Obama called for the speedy withdrawal of troops, but insisted he would maintain a strike force in the country and that he would not be held to the 16-month timetable he promised supporters on the stump. On Iran Obama promised direct and unconditional meetings, but also insisted on "preparations." Much to the relief of conservatives, since his election Obama seems to have dropped the goofier left-wing positions favored by the Democratic base in favor of the pragmatic positions most likely to keep the country safe and get him reelected in four years. Apparently Feinstein is taking his lead.

Still, rank and file liberals continue to press the case for war crimes trials of the Bush administration officials who saw that it was not always possible to use a noncoercive standard. Take for instance Dahlia Lithwick, who today writes what she herself describes as a petty plea for "legal accountability for the architects of President Bush's abusive-interrogation, secret-rendition, and warrantless-wiretapping programs." Lithwick accuses the Bush administration of having "authorized torture, rape, and worse." Well, surely they tried to use a noncoercive standard to the greatest extent possible, as will their Democratic successors if they're smart.

Robert Kagan offers an interesting potential solution to Pakistan’s problem of Islamist extremist groups threatening the viability of the state: "Have the international community declare that parts of Pakistan have become ungovernable and a menace to international security. Establish an international force to work with the Pakistanis to root out terrorist camps in Kashmir as well as in the tribal areas."

The problem with this approach is the roots of extremism run deeper than just at the fringes of the tribal areas and in Kashmir. Taliban, al Qaeda, and other extremist activists and sympathizers are entrenched in the intelligence and security services. Terror groups aren't just based in Waziristan and Kashmir. Much of the Northwest Frontier Province and Baluchistan are under siege. Last year, the Musharraf government had to launch a military assault on the Red Mosque, in the heart of Islamabad just one mile from the parliament building, to clear out rampaging Islamists enforcing sharia on the streets. Rawalpindi, a supposedly secure military garrison and sister city to Islamabad, has been rocked by terror attacks. Lashkar-e-Taiba's headquarters in Muridke is located just outside of Lahore in eastern Punjab province. The port city of Karachi is infested with extremists groups. These problems are merely the tip of the iceberg.

So where do you start? If you pick the tribal areas, how do we know the army won't fracture and civil war breaks out throughout Pakistan? If international forces move into Kashmir, will the Pakistani security establishment, which has invested much into the Kashmiri cause, cooperate? If there is one cause most Pakistanis can unite on, it is the liberation of India-occupied Kashmir (and by extension hatred of the Indians).

After NATO’s debacle in Afghanistan, what international force is going to be willing to take on Pakistan’s Islamists, who make Afghanistan’s extremists look like armed boy scouts in comparison? NATO countries are balking at the historically low casualty rates in Afghanistan and are looking to cut and run. And after trumpeting U.S. casualties in Iraq, will the American public and our political elites stand for similar if not higher casualty rates in Pakistan as were encountered in Iraq?

Finally, as Kagan notes, how exactly do you get the United Nation’s to go along with any plan that appears to infringe on a country's national sovereignty? States such as North Korea, perhaps one of the most horrific regimes since Pol Pot’s Cambodia, are coddled by Turtle Bay.

Pakistan remains the greatest national security challenge for President-elect Obama’s administration. There are no easy, off-the-shelf solutions that do not require enormous sacrifice from those who walk into that snake pit.

Not happy with the shape of the US Air Force? Propose your own! The Dew Line reports:

Pierre Sprey -- father of the A-10, co-father of the F-16 and ardent F-22/F-35 critic -- has teamed up with ex-Vietnam fighter jock Col Robert Dilger to propose a fascinating vision for an "effectiveness-based" airpower fleet.

4,000 smaller, more agile A-10s = $60 billion
2,500 turboprops as forward air controllers = $3 billion
100 new tankers = $28 billion
1,000 dirt-strip C-123-like airlifters = $30 billion
1,100 smaller, faster F-16s = $44 billion
183 F-22s already purchased
200 F-35s redesignated as A-35s "to meet commitments to allies" = $50 billion

A couple points, starting with the name. "Effects based" strikes me as somewhat silly. All of the USAF's weapons are 'effects based,' lest anyone believe we're procuring ineffectual aircraft.

Second, although I love the idea of 6,700 new ground attack aircraft blotting out the sun, all those air-to-ground platforms are useless unless the USAF can continue its half-century plus streak of total air supremacy. F-16s are still highly capable strikers, but would have a tough time matching the newer classes of MiGs and Suhkois. Seizing the skies has been the strategic cornerstone of every American military victory since Overlord, which means we simply must -- and I'm theatrically biting my knuckle here -- buy up more F-22 Raptors.

Last, where are the ISR platforms? UAVs aren't great in a medium-to-high threat environment, but they're still some of the best weapons we've got when it comes to detecting, tracking, and killing al Qaeda baddies. Plus, they're border-busters. What's more provocative? An A-10 crashing in northwest Pakistan, or an unmanned drone?

Sprey's an unusual character, but he does know military aviation. Though clearly overboard, the attack-heavy component of his plan pushes the ever-raging airpower debate in the right direction. That makes Sprey's overall strategy, if nothing else, worth a bent ear.

Hat Tip: Defense Tech

Obama in Narciso Rodriguez on Nov. 4

Move over Sarah Jessica, Sienna, and Mrs. Tom Cruise--Michelle Obama is the fashion industry’s newest It Girl.

Couturiers from Chicago to New York can’t conceal their excitement over the fashion Camelot that will come to D.C. on January 20th. Women’s Wear Daily, in fact, published 35 sketches of inaugural gowns for the soon-to-be First Lady, ranging from classic Michael Kors to wild Betsey Johnson designs. And many of Obama’s favorites (Chicago-based designer Maria Pinto, for example) aren’t included, though they must be in the running. WWD notes that "designers are positively euphoric" because "the American fashion industry hasn’t had a catch this big since, well, since another icon of Democratic chic took up residency on Pennsylvania Avenue in 1961."

With a more daring and less classic taste than Jackie Kennedy, Obama gets a privilege only available to the likes of red-carpet-walking starlets and French Vogue editor Carine Roitfeld--wearing a fresh-off-the-runway design before it hits retail stores. Both the Narciso Rodriguez dress she wore on Election Night (pictured) and the Jason Wu dress she wore for the recent Barbara Walters interview are Spring 2009 creations from the September runways.

The hype about Michelle Obama's style is breathless, especially after her Election Night disaster. But if she keeps American designers in business during an economy that's unkind to couture, fashionistas everywhere should be appreciative of her style. Perhaps we'll see her front row at Fashion Week?

From CNN:

A new national poll suggests that six in 10 Americans oppose using taxpayer money to help the ailing major U.S. auto companies.

Sixty-one percent of those questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Wednesday are dead set against the federal government providing billions of dollars in assistance to the automakers, while 36 percent favor such a bailout.

The poll, conducted Monday and Tuesday, also indicates that a majority of Americans, 53 percent, don't think government assistance for the automakers would help the U.S. economy.

"Only 15 percent say that they would be immediately affected if the auto companies went bankrupt," said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "Seven in 10 say that a bailout would be unfair to American taxpayers."

From Holman Jenkins in today's Wall Street Journal:

Maybe Washington will succeed in forestalling a deep and prolonged recession. Maybe all the money ($8 trillion by one count) being printed to acquire or insure mortgages, student loans, credit card receivables, commercial paper and banking shares will be seamlessly withdrawn once those assets are sold back to willing parties in the private sector when the panic has passed. Maybe taxpayers will even make a profit on the deal.

As Doug Flutie can testify, sometimes a 65-yard pass into the end zone lands in the hands of your own receiver.

Read it all.

The Indian government issued a diplomatic protest to Pakistan yesterday, requesting that Pakistan turn over about 20 senior terrorists in response to last week's attacks in Mumbai. At the top the list are Laskhar-e-Taiba leader Hafiz Saeed, Jaish-e-Mohammed leader Maulana Masood Azhar, and mafia and terror kingpin Dawood Ibrahim.

As noted yesterday, getting the Pakistanis to turn over Saeed and other members of the well-established terror infrastructure inside the country will be nearly impossible. The Laskhar-e-Taiba is a state within a state; it has its hooks set deeply in elements of the Pakistani military and the Inter-Service Intelligence Agency. Like Hezbollah in Lebanon, Laskhar-e-Taiba is more than a militia. It offers services such as education and healthcare not provided by the state.

The Pakistanis, knowing that turning over Saeed and others to the hated Indians would lead to unbearable internal political strife, now fear the Indians may conduct cross-border strikes into Pakistan. According to Pakistani intelligence, Lashkar-e-Taiba's sprawling Muridke complex is at the top of the list:

The Indian military establishment is trying to convince the decision-makers in the Congress government that an aerial attack on Muridke headquarters could be justified on the basis of the pattern of the ongoing drone attacks being carried out inside the Pakistani territory by Afghanistan-based US forces, which are targeting al-Qaeda and Taliban hideouts.

Pakistani sources say the Indian political leadership is being pursued by the military establishment to declare Muridke headquarters of the Jamaat-ul-Dawah as an enemy hideout [of the Lashkar-e-Taiba militants] before targeting it.

The U.S. government is going to have a hard time convincing the Indians not to act, particularly with the ongoing covert U.S. air campaign in Pakistan's tribal areas. The Indian government will be under internal political pressure to respond to the Mumbai attacks, particularly if Pakistan fails to turn over Saeed, Azhar, Dawood, and the others. The real challenge in the short term will be how to keep Pakistan and India from coming to blows, sparking a war between two nuclear powers.

With 97 percent of Georgia precincts reporting Senator Saxby Chambliss has won reelection, taking 57.4 percent of the vote; Democrat Jim Martin has garnered 42.6 percent. On November 4, Chambliss edged out Martin by a mere 3 points, so it's clear that Obama's coattails significantly helped Martin. I bet Liddy Dole wishes she could face off against Kay Hagan again with the Obama Juggernaut on the sidelines.

Chambliss's win will deny the Democrats a filibuster-proof Senate on straight party line votes. But there are many controversial measures on which one or more Republicans might break ranks. For example, Arlen Specter was the lone Republican to vote for cloture with the Democrats on "card check"--so Norm Coleman must win if the GOP is to maintain it's ability to stop that bill.

So far, so good. According to the USA Today / Gallup poll, more than three quarters of the country express approval for Obama's conduct during the presidential transition. Sixty-nine percent approve of his selection of Hillary Clinton to be Secretary of State. More - 80 percent - support his decision to retain Bob Gates at the Defense Department.

In other Obama numbers news, NBC's First Read has examined the Georgia Senate runoff results and notes that, without Obama's name on the ballot, Saxby Chambliss increased his margin of victory from 3 points on Election Day to 14 points on December 2.

"How many House or Senate Democrats," asks First Read, "who believe they won because of Obama coattails - especially in states like Alabama, North Carolina, and Virginia - saw the run-off result and said, 'Uh, oh. 2010 is going to be tough'?" Point taken, but let's not forget that folks like Mark Warner, Kay Hagen, and the Udall cousins in Colorado and New Mexico all ran ahead of, or even with, Obama.

Thomas Friedman spends the first half of his column today expressing his heartfelt wish that ordinary Pakistanis will take to the streets in solidarity with the victims of the Mumbai Massacre.

And he asks a fair question: "When Pakistanis and other Muslims are willing to take to the streets, even suffer death, to protest an insulting cartoon published in Denmark, is it fair to ask: Who in the Muslim world, who in Pakistan, is ready to take to the streets to protest the mass murders of real people, not cartoon characters, right next door in Mumbai?"

But then - inexplicably - Friedman gives his reason for why, in case we've forgotten, he is "still hoping - just once - for that mass demonstration of 'ordinary people' against the Mumbai bombers, not for my sake, not for India’s sake, but for Pakistan’s sake." That reason? "Because it takes a village."

Let me know if you agreed with the rest of the column. I couldn't read on after that.

Mario Cuomo, one of America's most entertaining political figures, has refused to sit for his official portrait ever since leaving his post as New York governor in 1995. "“I went to electric razors so I would not have to look at myself in the morning," Cuomo tells the Times. Fair enough. Lucky for us, illustrator Thomas Fuchs has made his own portraits of Cuomo, in the syle of some famous artists. My favorite is the Mondrian Mario.

It turns out that - I am not making this up - Dave Barry has a blog. Which he updates frequently! Here's Dave on his worst Christmas tree memory. Enjoy.

Sunday’s attack against the cruise ship, Nautica, owned by the American company, Oceania Cruises, took place as the luxury vessel sailed between Somalia and Yemen enroute Oman from Egypt. According to press reports, the attack occurred during daylight--which would have aided the ship’s crew in taking the evasive measures that helped prevent being hijacked.

If successful, the Nautica would have been an impressive prize. With more 600 passengers and a crew of almost 400, the vessel’s luxury attracts a wealthy clientele. Some British passengers were reported to have paid as much as 15,000 pounds for the month-long cruise from the Mediterranean to Singapore. The passenger list also included Americans and Australians. As hostages, the well-heeled passengers would have made a far more interesting international drama than either the 2 million barrels of oil aboard the Sirius Star seized last month, or the weapons aboard the Faina captured by pirates in September, that are now the subject of ransom negotiations. A thorny standoff over captured American hostages would be as disagreeable for the departing administration as it would have been for the one about to take power.

Nautica’s captain, however, responded successfully. He outran the two small boats that threatened his command and is said to have turned the ship’s main defenses--a high-decibel sound system called a Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) designed primarily to communicate by voice at distances up to 1500 feet--against the attackers. Loud noise may have dissuaded the attackers, or they may simply have been outpaced. At the tactical level, there is little to celebrate in this escape. Nautica is not a particularly fast passenger ship. Her top speed is advertised at 18 knots, a little better than 20 miles per hour--and much slower than for example the Cunard’s Queen Mary 2 whose advertised top speed is almost 35 mph. Finding a small boat that can keep up with or pass slower cruise ships offers pirates--or anyone else with a few thousand dollars--no large problem. The LRAD is also not a robust defense. One can, for example, buy a pair of ear plugs, or stuff wet paper in one’s ears to protect against uncomfortably loud noise.

The only cause for celebration here is the fact of Nautica’s escape. However, there will be more attacks against passenger ships, and if the pirates--or their closely watching terrorist cousins--succeed, the consequences are likely either to be distracting, protracted, expensive, bloody or all of these plus inimical to what the world has taken for granted for the last two centuries: untroubled peacetime access to the oceans.

The solution, as I argue in the current issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD, is to go after the pirates where they live, on shore. None of the other solutions so far proposed will have the same desirable outcome, an end to the scourge. Using inexpensive little speedboats to snare huge ocean-going behemoths is a perfect example of the asymmetrical tactics that the U.S. Defense Department worries about today. Arming merchantmen, privatizing seaborne defenses, adding naval patrols or the other measures that have been recently suggested to provide more security at sea do not answer the unconventional challenge. These measures can discourage piracy, but none of them impose unacceptable costs on the pirates. Until the pirates are forced to confront such consequences, they will continue their low-cost/high yield practices.

Ramesh Ponnuru writes that social conservatism isn't what ails the GOP.

Charlie Gibson interviews President Bush.

The number of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq in November was a wartime low.

There's more evidence that Lashkar-e-Taiba was involved in the terrorist attacks on Mumbai.

Bill Clinton will not fill Hillary's Senate seat.

Behold the most difficult waterboarding subject evah.

The AP reports:

In 2008, as the stock market cratered and the housing market collapsed, more young members of the Army, Air Force and Navy decided to re-up. While several factors might explain the rise in re-enlistments, including a decline in violence in Iraq, Pentagon officials acknowledge that bad news for the economy is usually good news for the military.

In fact, the Pentagon just completed its strongest recruiting year in four years.

"We do benefit when things look less positive in civil society," said David Chu, undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. "What difficult economic times give us, I think, is an opening to make our case to people who we might not otherwise have."

Certainly the military becomes a more attractive option in difficult economic times, but couldn't the AP have at least made a nod to the fact that some reenlist out of a sense of patriotic duty, or because they enjoy military life, or because they just like killing terrorists. And while the AP attributes some of the surge in reenlistment to the "decline in violence in Iraq," that decline in violence has a fairly strong correlation with our prospects for victory in that country. A good economy would make recruitment more difficult, but so would losing a war to a bunch of psychopaths in pajamas. Losing teams tend to have trouble holding on to their best players in the off season, but our team is winning while al Qaeda engages in a Nats-like struggle to attract talent to Iraq.