Yesterday (11/22/10) Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post wrote a column headlined "Obama's foreign policy needs an update," where he worried that the White House suffers from a "lack of grand strategy - or strategists. Its top foreign-policy makers are a former senator, a Washington lawyer and a former Senate staffer. There is no Henry Kissinger, no Zbigniew Brzezinski, no Condoleezza Rice; no foreign policy scholar."

The irony inherit in complaining that Obama's foreign policy is too old-fashioned and in need of some of the old Kissinger magic should be obvious enough. Less clear is why anyone would single out Condoleezza Rice like this; was the Bush administration's foreign policy uniquely strategic?

But the calls for Obama to get himself a Kissinger seem to be a regular feature of the Post's op-ed page.

--David Ignatius (7/8/10):

The two modern American masters of Machiavellian diplomacy, Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski, both practiced their art at times comparable to this one -- with the country suffering from reversals in war and loss of confidence in its political leadership.

So it's an interesting thought exercise to imagine how a national security adviser with the secretive, back-channel style of a Kissinger or Brzezinski would play America's diplomatic hand now. Mind you, I'm not suggesting what policies these two would actually recommend today but, instead, what a more creative diplomatic approach might produce in a time of difficulty.

When I say "creative," what I partly mean is devious. Both Kissinger and Brzezinski did not always state publicly what they were doing in private.

Ignatius did acknowledge that "Not all of Kissinger's machinations were successful." Well that's one way to put it. He added:

But if ever there were a moment when a battle-fatigued United States needs a wily strategist to explore options, this is it. Just who could play this role among the administration's current cast of characters isn't obvious, and that's a problem President Obama should address.

And then here's David Ignatius again, a mere nine months earlier (10/8/09):

I have been looking for a "doctrine" because, frankly, strategic thinking has been this administration's weak spot. A pragmatic president has surrounded himself with pragmatic advisers -- a retired Marine general as national security adviser, a former senator as secretary of state, a career intelligence officer as secretary of defense. None are grand strategists on the model of Henry Kissinger or Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Longtime Hugo Chavez critic Jackson Diehl leads his Washington Post column today (9/27/10)

Debate in Washington about Hugo Chávez --to the extent that it exists--generally centers on whether the Venezuelan strongman is a genuine threat to the United States or a buffoonish nuisance who is best ignored.

This narrow debate over Chavez's rule in Venezuela is something FAIR has documented on the country's top op-ed pages.

Of course, Diehl's point is that Chavez is a genuine threat, so anyone who takes the other position--that he's  merely an annoying buffoon--is naive.

New York Times reporter Isabel Kershner (7/15/10) writes a news analysis of why "peace talks" between Israel and the Palestinians are at a virtual standstill, despite the "upbeat atmosphere" in Washington following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Obama's recent meeting.

When she attempts to contextualize the "peace talks," Kershner throws in this misleading history:

Mr. Netanyahu's predecessor, Ehud Olmert made a far-reaching proposal in late 2008 to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. It included an Israeli withdrawal from 93.5 percent of the West Bank, with land swaps and a safe route for Palestinian travel between Gaza and the West Bank making up the other 6.5 percent of the land area that Israel won in 1967.

The notion that Mahmoud Abbas rejected a generous offer in 2008 is a commonly heard media trope: Jackson Diehl (Washington Post, 5/29/09) called the proposal a "a generous outline for Palestinian statehood," and the Post's editorial board described it as a "far-reaching peace offer" (11/5/09).

But the proposal was only "generous" or "far-reaching" from the official Israeli perspective. The Olmert plan (Newsweek, 6/13/09) would have had Israel annex illegal settlement blocs as well as reject the Palestinian "right of return," a position firmly grounded in international law. The “far-reaching” proposal actually would have required Palestinians to give away rights guaranteed to them, and would create a series of Palestinian islands surrounded by Israeli settlements.

Kershner also omits important context about Olmert's term as Prime Minister that would make it understandable as to why Palestinians did not act immediately on the proposal (Mondoweiss, 7/17/2009):

-While Olmert held final-status negotiations with Mahmoud Abbas (between the Annapolis Conference in November 2007 and the end of his term), there was a 43% increase in construction-starts in settlements.

-During Olmert's term as prime minister, 4,560 new housing units were constructed in settlements and 1,523 new tenders were issued for new housing units.

-Almost 1,500 new housing units were constructed east of the separation barrier (not in settlement blocs).

-Some 560 new structures were built in illegal outposts during Olmert's term.

-None of the illegal outposts in the West Bank were removed during Olmert's term.

In addition, Olmert's offer kept the majority of Israeli settlements and infrastructure in the West Bank, and would have resulted in permanent apartheid in the West Bank.

Kershner's reading of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations is really nothing new. Looking back at the failed Camp David talks in 2000, the U.S. press repeatedly referred to the Israeli offer in similarly glowing terms, even though that proposal, too, would have made impossible a contiguous Palestinian state and had no basis in international law (Extra!, 07-08/02, NormanFinkelstein.com).

Considering the fact that, "while the Obama administration says that the problems of the region cannot be solved by military means, the basic approach is reliance on heightened military means," FAIR associate Norman Solomon (Huffington Post, 3/24/09) thinks that "we desperately need a substantive national debate on U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan and Pakistan."

Solomon notes that one attempt at such a debate, an open letter that "lays down a clear line of opposition to the rationales for stepping up the warfare," garnered signatures from only "14 members of the House (eight Democrats, six Republicans)." But the U.S. Congress looks positively enlightened when compared to its hometown paper:

One of several journalists in Afghanistan on a tour "organized by the staff of commanding Gen. David D. McKiernan," the Washington Post's Jackson Diehl, wrote a March 23 op-ed in support of an invigorated "counterinsurgency strategy." With journalistic resolve, he explained: "Everyone expects a surge of violence and American casualties this year; no one expects a decisive improvement in the situation for at least several years beyond that."

The commanding general, Diehl added, does not anticipate that the Afghan army "can defend the country on its own" until 2016. In effect, the message is to stay the course for another seven years: "The thousands of American soldiers and civilians pouring into the country deserve that strategic patience; without it, the sacrifices we will soon hear of will be wasted."

Solomon hears "chillingly familiar echoes" in "the perverse logic of escalating the war in Afghanistan. 'Strategic patience'--more and more war--will be necessary so that those who must die will not have died in vain."

This column by Washington Post deputy editorial page editor Jackson Diehl has received some well-deserved criticism, largely for its peculiar claim that reforming the U.S. healthcare system is a lot like invading Iraq.  What jumped out at me was this supposed parallel between George W. Bush and Barack Obama: After September 11, Diehl wrote, "The president failed to ask a willing nation for sacrifice." Likewise, in explaining his stimulus program, Obama said, "You will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: not one single dime. In fact, the recovery plan provides a tax cut . . . and these checks are on the way."

It's true that if your nation launches a war, that's going to take resources, and that means that people are going to have to sacrifice. But reversing an economic downturn isn't about taking stuff away from people; it's about encouraging them to spend money so that people who are unemployed can be put back to work. The implication that Obama should have told people he was raising their taxes in order to combat the recession is sheer neo-Hooverism.