C.M. Sennott's Notebook:

A bombing with a message?

It's all too common to hear news of yet another truck bombing in Pakistan, but this one is worth paying close attention to.

It was just too close on the heels of a visit to Islamabad by the head of Central Command General David Petraeus and it was close enough to do some pretty serious damage to the country's intelligence headquarters in Lahore.

This has the intel community wondering if this was not intended to be a very significant terrorist attack that was, it seems , at least partially thwarted by Pakistani forces. Even though they stopped the truck, at least 24 people were killed. Our correspondent Shahan Mufti has just returned to Pakistan after a visit to the United States and will soon be bringing us up to speed.

This is what went down, according to the latest Reuters report from Pakistan:

Gunmen attacked a police headquarters in the Pakistani city of Lahore on Wednesday, setting off a car-bomb that killed at least 24 people in what the government said was revenge for an offensive against the Taliban.

There was no claim of responsibility for the attack, which wounded nearly 300 people and caused extensive damage. It came after warnings of retaliation in response to the army's attack on militants in the Swat region in the northwest.

The blast also hit after Gen. Petraeus was in Islamabad for meetings on Tuesday with government and military leaders.

The United States needs Pakistani action against militants to help defeat Al Qaeda and disrupt support for the Taliban in Afghanistan. It has welcomed the Swat offensive.

"I believe that anti-Pakistan elements, who want to destabilize our country and see defeat in Swat, have now turned to our cities," Interior Minister Rehman Malik told reporters.

Two officers and six lower level officials from the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency were among those killed, according to a senior government official.

Opinion: Netanyahu falls into character

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was right back to his old self Monday.

At a press conference after his first meeting with President Barack Obama in the White House, he dragged his feet just as he did in his first term as prime minister when President Bill Clinton was in office.

Back then, Clinton was desperately trying to put back together the pieces of a peace process shattered by the assassin’s bullet from an Israeli settler that killed Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who had made the bold step toward peace with the Palestinians.

Once again Netanyahu is in power, and once again he is cautiously eyeing the political terrain back home in Israel rather than looking toward the future and that place on the horizon where he needs to lead his country. He carefully avoided using the phrase “two states” even though every prime minister before him — even the hard-right leader Ehud Olmert — has reluctantly come to accept the words and the idea behind them.

And the only thing that all these careful calculations show is that Netanyahu does not have the bold confidence of a Rabin, he does not have the character that an Israeli leader needs to make a breakthrough in peace negotiations.

And in so doing he lost the initiative yesterday.  So many diplomats in Washington and Jerusalem, and even Amman, Jordan, had given him the benefit of the doubt. And there were whispers and even flat out statements from his own defense secretary, the former prime minister Ehud Barak, that he would say something bold and surprise us all. Many wise observers hold that this is still possible.

But on Monday it didn't happen. 

Instead, the differences between the U.S. and Israeli policies were made more stark. Obama wants a Palestinian state; Netanyahu refuses to put together the words "two" and "states." He prefers to speak about how to prevent the Palestinians from establishing a second Gaza in the West Bank, requiring them to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, and security arrangements. Obama said that settlement building must come to a halt. Netanyahu responded by saying that Palestinians must provide "reciprocity."

Obama pushed ahead, saying that he wanted a two state solution and making it perfectly clear that he wanted an end to settlement expansion. He also said that he believed he would be in talks with Iran within a year.

Obama seems to be unwilling to wait for Netanyahu, and it is a wise diplomatic move, even for a strong ally. The Israeli and Palestinian people have been waiting too long for the peace and security they desire. America should not tolerate any more delays in following a road map that long ago made it clear where the road ends: with two states.

The buzz on McKiernan's sacking

Somewhere between McKiernan and McChrystal must be a colossal tactical error in the field that likely caused this sudden change of command in Afghanistan.

You only had to listen to the notably terse tone of comments at Monday’s press conference to know that there must be something big behind the stripping down of McKiernan that almost certainly spells the end of his military career.

With the announcement by Defense Secretary Robert Gates Monday that Gen. David McKiernan would be forced to step down, the Pentagon was telling us that he committed a significant error in the field.

And so the big question inside the Pentagon right now is what did he do to be shown the door in such a hasty and harsh manner?

One former Pentagon official suggested to GlobalPost that the airstrike that killed civilians in western Afghanistan last week was an embarrassment to the military and President Barack Obama and may have precipitated a shakeup that had been in the works for some weeks.  

The broad fault line within the military as it gears up for a surge in Afghanistan is between those who pursue a conventional approach and those skilled in the unconventional aspects of war.

For sure, McKiernan embodies the old-school, more conventional approach and Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, a former commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, is the embodiment of a newer and more unconventional thinking.

McChrystal, a Green Beret and Ranger who has commanded several key Special Operations, is Gen. David Petraeus’ kind of leader, who has a proven ability to think and act decisively and creatively in the field.

McChrystal’s success in using unconventional counter-insurgency intelligence gathering and strategies to track and kill Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq is something that Petraeus frequently highlights as a shining example of the kind of counter-insurgency that he embraces as the head of central command.

He has had a stellar career with one notable exception. The  military investigation into the 2004 death of Cpl. Pat Tillman held McChrystal accountable in part for the false information that was given to the public about the circumstances surrounding Tillman’s death and the recommendation that he receive a silver star.

It turned out Tillman, a professional football player whose decision to enlist after Sept. 11, 2001 was played up by the military, was killed by friendly fire and not in a gun battle as was originally stated.

There are more questions here that need to be answered. This move goes beyond that broad dividing line within in the military and the Pentagon reporters will be scrambling to find out what really lies at the bottom of this profound shift in Afghanistan on the cusp of the surge of some 20,000 troops there.  

 

Mitrovica to host 'divided cities' conference next year

BOSTON — Mitrovica is a city that is divided by a river and the hatred that runs through it.

On one side of the river are the ethnic Serbs who see their city as part of Serbia and on the other side are the ethnic Albanians who believe their city is part of the newly established Kosovo.

It is just one of the five divided cities that have sent delegations to Boston this week for an extraordinary gathering hosted by the University of Massachusetts at Boston.

The idea behind the conference titled "The Forum for Cities in Transition" is that divided cities such as Belfast, Beirut, Nicosia and Kirkuk have much to learn from each other and can help each other find a path toward peace and reconciliation. Delegates from each of these bitterly divided places have gathered for a three-day conference that ends tomorrow.

And the leaders of Mitrovica seem to be learning their lessons well here in Boston.

The officials from Mitrovica agreed to have their city serve as the host to another meeting of divided cities next year.

Padraig O'Malley, the distinguished professor of peace and reconciliation at UMass who brought the leaders of these cities together, said the gesture by Mitrovica was more than significant progress.

The city is a place "where there would be no cooperation before" and now, he added, delegates "have decided to do something as a single city, hosting the first event of the conference."

"This is the part of Kosovo that nobody could crack. It's major," said O'Malley, who has worked tirelessly over two decades to help communities torn by war to find a way toward healing and reconciliation.

See Charlie Sennott's column on O'Malley's peace efforts and GlobalPost's coverage of the first day of the conference.

Phillips alive or pirates dead

Teddy Roosevelt would have known what to do with these pirates.

In his day he went after them with everything he had.

In 1907, there was a famous naval standoff in which Barbary pirates held an American for ransom. It was a drama that riveted the nation and the world just like the one now playing out off the coast of Somalia.

The brigand was the legendary Ahmed er Raisuli, a Moroccan known as the last of the great Barbary pirates. The American held captive was Ion Perdicaris, who was being held for $70,000 ransom.

Roosevelt announced, "Pedicardis alive or Raisuli dead!"

And the slogan became part of the legend of the high seas and the Ameican might that would protect its global shipping and commerce.

Roosevelt sent seven U.S. battleships across the Atlantic to the Moroccan coast, but in the end the hostage drama was resolved when the Moroccan government paid the ransom and Perdicaris was freed.

The story even became a Hollywood movie titled, "The Wind and the Lion." But, OK, so in the 1975 Hollywood version the  American businessman with the hard to pronounce last name was turned into  a beautiful woman played by Candice Bergen and the pirate was Sean Connery.

Today's real, live drama on the high seas with Captain Richard Phillips being held captive by Somali pirates also has all the makings of a Hollywood film, but perhaps with a more complex plot.

We haven't yet heard Obama declare: "Phillips alive, or pirates dead!"

But we are certain screenplay writers are already circling like sharks around this story.

This time around the narrative seems to be not about the might of the U.S. Navy and the brash confidence of Teddy Roosevelt, but about the strange futility of American power in the modern world.

There are hulking Navy ships aligned against a small, out-of-gas lifeboat where pirates are holding captive an American who , if the story line is accurate, heroically endangered his own life to protect his crew and ship. And the Navy, it seems, can do nothing but wait.

It's becoming more akin to "Dog Day Afternoon"  than "The Wind and The Lion."

It's not over yet. The script is being written every hour on CNN, which has truly done an excellent job covering the story.

We're pretty proud of our smaller team of reporters at GlobalPost who have also done an admirable job.

Our correspondent in Kenya, Tristan McConnell, has been on the story from day one. GlobalPost columnist HDS Greenway provided an  authoritative history of America's long battle with pirates. Tom Fenton in London commented on the failures of U.S. policy in Somalia that stand as the backdrop to the drama. And now our Boston reporter Stephanie Garlow has contributed an excellent profile of Phillips, who hails from Massachusetts and studied at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy here.

We call this kind of dogged, on-the-scene reporting GroundTruth, but the phrase seems off given that it is all unfolding in the high seas. So we'll have to call it just plain, old truth.

C.M.'s Links:

Global Blogs:

• Latest

More Dispatches:

• Latest

Sponsored Links

Prom Dresses
Brokers Online Health Insurance
Casino News
drug addiction treatment
P90X
Credit Card