Did you read the George Packer piece in New Yorker? That esssay earns a Silver Star, at least. But don't expect it to make you feel good about the situation. His reporting is impressive. Here's a sample:

A reporter for the military newspaper Stars & Stripes had heard a bewildered sergeant near Tikrit ask his captain, “What’s our mission here?” The captain replied sardonically, “We’re here to guard the ice-cream trucks going north so that someone else can guard them there.”

Much of the activity at an enduring FOB simply involves self-supply. These vast military oases raise the spectre of American permanence in Iraq, but, to me, they more acutely suggested American irrelevance. Soldiers have even coined a derogatory term for those who never get off the base: "fobbits." I spent two days at Speicher without seeing an Iraqi.

And another:

A field-grade officer in the 101st Airborne said, “The algorithm of success is to get a good-enough solution.” There were, he said, three categories of assessment for every aspect of the mission: optimal, acceptable, and unacceptable. He made it clear that optimal wasn’t in the running. “We’re handing a shit sandwich over to someone else,” the officer said.

Anyway, on to the news article:

Iraqis seem to be gritting their teeth and clinging grimly to the battered hope for democracy, even in what many see as a strange and uncomfortable incarnation.

Riyadh al-Adhadh, a Baghdad doctor, likened Iraq to a drowning man, and the prime minister-designate a floating plank to which people cling.

Said one Baghdad doctor: Iraq is a drowning man, and the prime minister-designate a floating plank.

"We have to hold on to the wood, even if it has nails," said the doctor, a rheumatologist named Riyadh al-Adhadh. "We need this wood, whatever its shape. It is all that prevents us from going under the sea."

Beyond the obvious obstacle of a severe lack of professionals and experts, many of whom have fled Iraq, Mr. Maliki will be under tremendous pressure from his own and other Shiite parties to fill his cabinet from within their ranks.

A woman in a housecoat stood in her doorway just down the street. "There's a lack of everything," she said. "We want someone who will come to save the people."

Warily, Iraqis Investing Hope in New Leaders

To those of you who don't know, our country has never been served by a more competent and professional military. For that reason, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's recent statement that "we" made the "right strategic decisions" but made thousands of "tactical errors" is an outrage. It reflects an effort to obscure gross errors in strategy by shifting the blame for failure to those who have been resolute in fighting. The truth is, our forces are successful in spite of the strategic guidance they receive, not because of it.

Why Iraq Was a Mistake

According to one who was present, Churchill suddenly blurted out: "Are we animals? Are we taking this too far?"

Among the Dead Cities

The "better idea" consists of separating the struggle against radical Islamism from promoting democracy in the Middle East, focusing on the first struggle, and dramatically changing our tone and tactics on the democracy promotion front, at least for now.

Rapid modernization is likely to produce more short-term radicalism, not less.

This is not a trivial point.

Read that again.

Rapid modernization is likely to produce more short-term radicalism, not less.

This is not a trivial point.

Right.

The United States and its Western allies should be helping genuine, traditional and pious Muslims to reassert their dominance over a beautiful and capacious religious civilization in the face of a well-financed assault by extremist thugs.

The new NSS keeps referring to Islam as "proud", which I find incredibly galling. Hasn't the President seen Se7en?

The last thing that democracy activists need right now is more American fingerprints on outside funding.

Democracy promotion should remain an integral part of American foreign policy, but it should not be seen as a principal means of fighting terrorism. We should stigmatize and fight radical Islamism as if the social and political dysfunction of the Arab world did not exist, and we should shrewdly, quietly, patiently and with as many allies as possible promote the amelioration of that dysfunction as if the terrorist problem did not exist. It is when we mix these two issues together that we muddle our understanding of both, with the result that we neither defeat terrorism nor promote democracy but rather the reverse.

A Better Idea, By Francis Fukuyama and Adam Garfinkle

We have fomented civil war in Iraq. We have probably fomented internecine war in the Muslim world between the Shias and the Sunnis, and I think Bush may well have started the third world war, all for their own personal policies.

Somebody's gonna have to clear up the aftermath ... It may be two or three generations in repairing.

Did you catch that?

... masters of diverting attention away from real issues and debating the silly ...

This last point is true, but he could be talking about almost anything in government.

Delta Force founder - 'our credibility is utterly zero'

There is undeniably a Blade Runner–like feel to this city. The violence is so pervasive and unfathomable that you wonder what people think they are dying for.

"We no longer know what is going on, but we are pretending we do."

"It's a little like being in third grade, where everybody has to be home before dark," someone says. Everyone laughs.

That Western journalists now find being embedded a kind of liberation from imprisonment in their bureaus is something of an irony.

The Green Zone now looks something like one of the United Arab Emirates, where Asian contract workers often far outnumber actual citizens.

While official language is relentlessly upbeat, the already nightmarish reality has been getting worse with each passing day.

You might also want to read Jeffrey Gettelman's report from Baghdad.

Baghdad: The Besieged Press

Network academics caution that the field is still in its infancy and should not be regarded as a panacea. (Yet.)

Can Network Theory Thwart Terrorists?

Afghanistan is again at a crossroads.

One road leads to peace and prosperity; the other leads to the loss of all that has been achieved.

Everything depends on the level of international commitment to help Afghanistan emerge from the dark shadows of the instability and violence of its recent past.

The Future of Afghanistan

To be successful, the United States combating terrorism policy must include the synchronized use of defense, diplomacy and development to address the multiple elements of a combating terrorism strategy. This includes the underlying conditions that terrorists seek to exploit to undermine the legitimacy of governments and facilitate terrorist recruiting campaigns. As valuable as the attack and disrupt mission may be, it fails to help at risk countries establish conditions that counter ideological support to terrorism and promote regional stability. This book examines the strategies, interagency process and regional approaches of the United States combating terrorism effort, emphasizes the importance of addressing the underlying conditions in supporting mainstream Muslim efforts to reject violent extremism, and makes policy recommendations to improve this effort.

Click through to browse a hyperlink-enabled PDF version of the table of contents. Separate chapters are available from there.

How To Win The Long Struggle Against Terrorism

The U.S. government could go a long way toward building understanding in the Middle East by backing the study of Arabic.

Learn it, love it, speak it.

"Do as I say, not as I do" works much better when they can understand the words you're speaking.

Speaking Their Language, by Peter Berkowitz