I share the growing fear that the Obama administration has decided to distance itself as much as possible from gay rights issues, and that it has no plans to act on behalf of the gay community unless it is absolutely forced to. It’s hurtful and disappointing and, for a president who has been fairly gutsy on national security and foreign policy, genuinely surprising to me.

But today’s announcement from the court brought about a different wave of frustration, rooted in the fact that the Obama administration’s argument and the court’s decision are legally correct. “Rational basis” is a level of scrutiny that the government is almost always able to meet, particularly in a context involving military policy. And while Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 case striking down sodomy laws, isn’t the most clearly written opinion in the world, it’s pretty clear that it applies rational basis and finds a violation of an individual right to privacy.

That might sound like a pretty progressive ruling, just as the Massachusetts Supreme Court same-sex marriage ruling sounded pretty progressive in its holding that denying LGBT people the right to marry is irrational. The problem with them is that they make for pretty weak precedent. There are basically two approaches courts can take on gay rights cases. First, they can avoid recognizing the rights of LGBT people as LGBT people and instead root their decisions in broad individual rights (like privacy) or strike down laws as completely irrational. But privacy is only going to apply in certain areas (whereas it would have no bearing on, say, same-sex marriage, or DADT), and finding that laws are irrational is pretty legally tenuous and unconvincing. Alternatively, courts can recognize that the LGBT community constitutes a class of people not unlike women or racial or religious groups that have been historically targeted by the majority. If the courts were to make these kinds of decisions, then the level of scrutiny they could apply to laws affecting gay people could jump up, such that the government would be required not just to show the “rationality” of the law but a compelling need for it.

Ultimately, DADT was always destined to be an issue dealt with by Congress and the White House rather than the courts. But the resistance by the courts to provide LGBT people with heightened protection affects marriage rights, employment rights, immigration, and so on. While the courts, predictably, have been the most willing of the three branches to protect gay rights, all three branches have been pretty weak on these issues. The bulk of my anger will remain focused on the president, but he’s not the only one failing to protect equality.

Among the objectionable scenes is one in which Bruno — a gay Austrian fashionista played by Baron Cohen — appears to have anal sex with a man on camera. In another, the actor goes on a hunting trip and sneaks naked into the tent of one of the fellow hunters, an unsuspecting non-actor.

Admittedly I don’t know how graphic these scenes get, but I’m willing to bet that an equally graphic scene involving heterosexual sex would not provoke the NC-17 rating. I’m reminded of the cuts made to Stanley Kubrick’s underrated classic Eyes Wide Shut, in which his shots were digitally altered in the famous orgy scene so as to block out a couple instances of lesbian sex, thereby reducing the rating from NC-17 to R.

This story comes on the heels of an even more bizarre story: Times Online reported a couple weeks ago that I Love You Phillip Morris, a new comedy starring Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor as incarcerated gay lovers, from the guys who brought you Bad Santa, may go straight to DVD in the United States for lack of an American distributor:

Film industry insiders said the movie, which features a graphic sex scene and frequent references to gay sex, had fallen foul of anti-gay prejudice in America.

I’m skeptical that this movie won’t eventually find a distributor, but the fact that it’s even having trouble is a little startling. In the wake of Brokeback Mountain and Milk – both profitable films that portray gay sex and deal explicitly with gay subject matter – it seems a bit bizarre that Hollywood would conclude that American audiences wouldn’t be open to this movie.

It shouldn’t be that startling, however. Homosexuality in film tends to fall into a few limited categories:

1. Tragedy: gay characters ultimately meet with a tragic fate, usually death. See, e.g., Brokeback Mountain, Milk, Philadelphia.
2. Comic relief: gay characters or homosexuality in general is used as a gag. See, e.g., I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, any movie with a hilariously flamboyant gay dude.
3. Female companions: gay characters exist solely as the fun-loving, sassy friend of the lead heterosexual female, esp. common in romantic comedies. See, e.g., My Best Friend’s Wedding.
4. Murderers: gay characters are psychotic killers. See, e.g., Monster, Rope.

I Love You Phillip Morris doesn’t appear to fall into any of these categories. The gay characters here are not mere comic relief, they’re the center of the story. And while homosexuality was also at the center of I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, the joke there was OMG THOSE STRAIGHT GUYS HAVE TO PRETEND TO BE GAY, THAT’S TOTALLY ZANY, and while I haven’t seen it, I’m told that at one point in the film the characters are told to kiss to prove their homosexuality lest they face some severe consequence I can’t remember, and the joke is that that would be just too gay so they don’t do it. I Love You Phillip Morris doesn’t appear to be going for that kind of humor.

I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, incidentally, made over $120 million domestically. You hear that, and you hear that I Love You Phillip Morris is struggling to find an American distributor, and you basically want to shoot yourself in the fucking head.

Trailer for I Love You Phillip Morris after the jump (no trailer out yet for the Bruno movie).

These issues have been getting a lot of talk lately. The cover story of the new issue of Foreign Policy magazine is on what they dub the “Axis of Upheaval” – fragile or failed states that are being destabilized by the economic downturn. The story fits neatly with last week’s report from Adm. Dennis Blair, the Director of National Intelligence, which for the first time in years demoted terrorism as the foremost national security threat in favor of the threat to global stability posed by the economic crisis. As the economy spirals, populations will potentially become more radicalized just as governments become weaker. Pressure grows on those governments to become increasingly nationalistic, while pressure builds for the rest of the world to step in and lend support to these weaker states.

The European Union is facing similar pressures. Last week saw reports that the EU is considering having its bigger economies bail out its smaller ones, possibly by creating a fund financed by the European Investment Bank that would buy the smaller countries’ government debt. And while concerns that the economic crisis might foment Euroskepticism, the Czech Republic’s lower house just approved the Lisbon Treaty, while a recent poll in Ireland shows that 51% of voters there would now back the treat in a new referendum, which is expected in October but may be moved forward (last year referendum voters rejected the treaty by a 53.4% to 46.6% margin). At the same time, the Czech president recently compared the EU to a communist dictatorship and refused to say whether he would sign the treaty.

And, of course, the United States has gone through its own little bout with protectionism via the so-called “Buy American” provision in the stimulus bill. Pressure from the White House led to Congress taking most of the teeth out of the provision by inserting language that the United States is still bound by its international trade obligations, meaning that Canada and Mexico (as members of NAFTA), any states we have bilateral trade agreements with that cover government procurement, and any states that have signed onto the WTO government procurement agreement cannot be discriminated against. That notably leaves out China and Brazil, but still, it’s not the biggest deal in the world. It does, however, demonstrate the tug-of-war between protectionist impulses and globalist necessities.

The stimulus itself is a bigger example of the problem. Obviously there are several readers of this blog who think the stimulus won’t work no matter what. But if there is any hope of it working, it needs to be a global stimulus given that it is a global crisis. A lot of big economies, including China, have passed massive stimulus plans, but others, like Germany, have been holding out, and the more holdouts there are, the less effective the stimulus will be. (More on this point in a good Matthew Yglesias column here.)

How all this turns out is anybody’s guess, and it likely depends a great deal on just how bad the economy gets. The Great Depression led to the transformation of the federal government, and WWII led to the creation of relatively powerful international institutions. Those are two events of massive historical significance, and nobody seems to be predicting that things will get quite as bad as they got int he 1930’s, nor is there any reason to anticipate a global conflict on the scale of a world war. That suggests that the world’s response to this crisis will be less dramatic and more incrementalist.

Still, it seems to me that with institutions like the UN and the WTO already in place, it will be easier to build off those institutions in the future. And because of institutions like the WTO and the general proliferation of trade agreements around the world, it’s a lot more difficult to act on our protectionist impulses – a measure like Smoot-Hawley would be unthinkable in today’s world, both because we have learned from our mistakes and because we institutional checks against such actions. At the same time, that reality might just make the need for greater integration less pressing and therefore less likely to happen.

Harold Meyerson wrote an excellent piece for the American Prospect recently on the potential for a “Global New Deal.” In it he wrote about the impetus for greater global economic integration:

The most far-reaching case for global regulation — indeed, for a global New Deal — comes from the global labor movement. That unions favor New Deal?like social and economic arrangements comes as no surprise; that the labor movement now has genuinely global institutions probably does. In recent years, hitherto national unions and union-federations have begun to go global simply to keep up with their employers. [...] On Nov. 15 — the same day that the G-20 leaders met in Washington — three such new global entities, the International Trade Union Confederation, the Trade Union Advisory Council to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, and the Global Union Federations (sectoral organizations of individual unions), released their own “Washington Declaration.” It called for nothing less than a new Bretton Woods system that would create a global economy with compacts and laws to regulate capitalism and foster countervailing institutions — such as global unions themselves — that would reduce the economic inequality inherent in unregulated capitalism.

…

Pushing for stronger global regulation of finance, product safety, labor rights, and the like might seem an indulgence Obama can ill afford. Or, given the exigencies of coping with a global economy, such global reach could prove surprisingly necessary.

My thoughts above are admittedly a little jumbled – I’ve written this over a couple days and with a bit of a cold. But what Meyerson says above gets at the basic point I’m making. I wouldn’t predict anything as ambitious as what he describes, but it seems to me we have the political actors and the institutions in place that could set the stage for something pretty dramatic. If things really start to tank, we could be in for some radical changes one way or another.

You can see EW’s list at their website here, or, if you hate the whole irritating slideshow format, you can just see the whole list one on page here (via my new favorite blog /film).

This is, it should be noted, a pretty tough task. On the one hand, you want to credit directors with long, impressive careers, even if those careers have tapered off a bit as they’ve gotten older. But on the other hand, you want to recognize directors who clearly have talent but who just haven’t made many movies yet. So you’ve got to balance your Lifetime Achievement Award winners against your promising up-and-comers. And how do you compare somebody like Ridley Scott, who has made some modern classics like Blade Runner and Alien but also some clunkers like G.I. Jane and A Good Year, against somebody like Steven Soderbergh, who hasn’t made anything as perfect as Blade Runner but who has had a much more consistent run of movies that are good-to-great?

So, okay, it’s tough, and my list probably isn’t quite perfect – but EW’s list is still indefensible and embarrassing.

50 Greatest Active Film Directors

1. MARTIN SCORSESE

Greatest Hits: Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The King of Comedy, The Last Temptation of Christ, Goodfellas, The Departed

2. DAVID LYNCH

Greatest Hits: Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive

3. JOEL & ETHAN COEN

Greatest Hits: Blood Simple, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother Where Art Though?, No Country for Old Men

4. WOODY ALLEN

Greatest Hits: Sleeper, Annie Hall, Manhattan, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Hannah and Her Sisters, Crimes and Misdemeanors

5. STEVEN SPIELBERG

Greatest Hits: Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, Catch Me If You Can, Munich

6. SIDNEY LUMET

Greatest Hits: 12 Angry Men, Fail-Safe, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Network, The Verdict, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead

7. SPIKE LEE

Greatest Hits: She’s Gotta Have It, Do the Right Thing, Mo’ Better Blues, Jungle Fever, Malcolm X, 25th Hour

8. PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON

Greatest Hits: Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Punch Drunk Love, There Will Be Blood

9. QUENTIN TARANTINO

Greatest Hits: Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill Vols. 1 & 2

10. GUS VAN SANT

Greatest Hits: Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho, Good Will Hunting, Gerry, Elephant, Last Days, Paranoid Park, Milk

11. MIKE NICHOLS

Greatest Hits: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Graduate, Catch-22, Carnal Knowledge, The Birdcage, Primary Colors, Closer

12. STEVEN SODERBERGH

Greatest Hits: sex, lies, and videotape; Schizopolis; Out of Sight; The Limey; Erin Brockovich; Traffic; Ocean’s Eleven

13. JONATHAN DEMME

Greatest Hits: The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia, Rachel Getting Married

14. RIDLEY SCOTT

Greatest Hits: Alien, Blade Runner, Thelma & Louise, Gladiator

15. ROMAN POLANSKI

Greatest Hits: Chinatown, Rosemary’s Baby, The Pianist

16. PAUL GREENGRASS

Greatest Hits: The Bourne Supremacy, United 93, The Bourne Ultimatum

17. DARREN ARONOFSKY

Greatest Hits: Pi, Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler

18. ANG LEE

Greatest Hits: The Ice Storm; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Brokeback Mountain; Lust, Caution

19. DAVID FINCHER

Greatest Hits: Seven, The Game, Fight Club, Zodiac, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

20. DANNY BOYLE

Greatest Hits: Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, Slumdog Millionaire

21. BRAD BIRD

Greatest Hits: The Incredibles, Ratatouille

22. CHRISTOPHER NOLAN

Greatest Hits: Memento, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight

23. SPIKE JONZE

Greatest Hits: Being John Malkovitch, Adaptation

24. PEDRO ALMODOVAR

Greatest Hits: All About My Mother, Volver, Talk to Her

25. WES ANDERSON

Greatest Hits: Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic

26. DAVID CRONENBERG

Greatest Hits: The Fly, A History of Violence, Eastern Promises

27. ALFONSO CUARON

Greatest Hits: Y Tu Mama Tambien, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Children of Men

28. SAM RAIMI

Greatest Hits: Evil Dead, Evil Dead II, Army of Darkness, A Simple Plan, Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2

29. JUDD APATOW

Greatest Hits: The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up

30. TODD FIELD

Greatest Hits: In the Bedroom, Little Children

31. ALEXANDER PAYNE

Greatest Hits: Election, About Schmidt, Sideways

32. TIM BURTON

Greatest Hits: Beetle Juice, Batman, Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns, Ed Wood, Big Fish

33. SOFIA COPPOLA

Greatest Hits: The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation

34. MICHEL GONDRY

Greatest Hits: Human Nature, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Science of Sleep

35. ANDREW STANTON

Greatest Hits: Finding Nemo, Wall-E

36. CLINT EASTWOOD

Greatest Hits: Unforgiven, Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, Letters from Iwo Jima

37. MICHAEL MANN

Greatest Hits: Manhunter, Heat, The Insider, Ali, Collateral

38. FERNANDO MEIRELLES

Greatest Hits: City of God, The Constant Gardener

39. CAMERON CROWE

Greatest Hits: Say Anything…, Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous, Vanilla Sky

40. STEPHEN FREARS

Greatest Hits: Dangerous Liaisons, High Fidelity, The Queen

41. NOAH BAUMBACH

Greatest Hits: The Squid and the Whale, Margot at the Wedding

42. BAZ LUHRMANN

Greatest Hits: Romeo+Juliet, Moulin Rouge

43. GEORGE CLOONEY

Greatest Hits: Confessions of a Dangerous Mind; Good Night, and Good Luck

44. JON FAVREAU

Greatest Hits: Elf, Iron Man

45. BRIAN DE PALMA

Greatest Hits: Carrie, Scarface, The Untouchables, Mission: Impossible

46. KEVIN SMITH

Greatest Hits: Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma

47. PETER JACKSON

Greatest Hits: the Lord of the Rings trilogy, King Kong

48. RON HOWARD

Greatest Hits: Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, Cinderella Man, Frost/Nixon

49. JAMES CAMERON

Greatest Hits: The Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Titanic

50. SAM MENDES

Greatest Hits: American Beauty, Road to Perdition, Revolutionary Road

It’s been widely reported that President Obama has ordered the sending 17,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. I support that decision, as long as it is made in the context of the strategy I just indicated (we’ll find out if that’s the case when we find out the results of the 60-day Af-Pak strategy review). It’s not at first glance clear how more troops are consistent with such a strategy – it might seem that more troops are necessary only if we’re pursuing a more ambitious strategy, and that a greater, more intrusive American presence is more likely to inflame Afghan popular opinion. That’s definitely the risk that comes with more troops, but this UN report is enough to persuade me that more troops is better than what we’re doing now.

The level of civilian deaths last year was at its highest since the war began. A small majority – 55% – of those deaths were caused by the Taliban, which is good news in the sense that it’s better than if we were causing the most civilian deaths there. But the trouble is that of the civilian deaths caused by us, 65% are a result of airstrikes. Airstrikes are an important tool, but if they’re going to result in large numbers of civilian deaths, they need to be avoided if possible. An increased ground presence will, presumably, at least partially alleviate the need for airstrikes. Our presence will be more pervasive, but the tradeoff is (hopefully) fewer civilian deaths, which is hugely beneficial to our goals there. It also, of course, puts American troops at greater risk, which is why if we’re going to fight this war at all, we need to have clear and realistic objectives so we’re not sending these troops into a quagmire. It’s not yet clear if that’s the case, but hopefully Obama or Gates gives us some indication sometime soon.

Alexander Payne, the film’s director, said that President Obama has told him on two separate occasions that it’s his favorite political movie.

I just got a thrill up my leg.

Top 10 Valentine’s Day Movies for the In Love

1. Harold and Maude
2. Annie Hall

Strangely enough, most of the movies on this list end tragically or ambiguously – perhaps following in the footsteps of the all-time classic romance, Romeo & Juliet. Annie Hall is no exception, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a movie for lovers – the relationship between Diane Keaton and Woody Allen is, whatever its resolution, a celebration of true, honest love, for all its difficulties and complications.

3. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
4. Casablanca
5. Say Anything…

The romance in Cameron Crowe’s directorial debut outshines his subsequent work in Jerry Maguire, perhaps because Crowe provides such a sharp, moving contrast between John Cusack and Ione Skye’s love and the collapse of Skye’s relationship with her father. Say Anything… is by far the best of the ’80’s teen romances, and remains one of the most intelligent teen movies ever made.

6. Once
7. Brokeback Mountain

Another tragic love story – tragic not because the love fails but because it remains so painfully, unalterably strong in circumstances (again echoing Romeo & Juliet) that don’t allow for it.

8. Before Sunrise
9. Punch Drunk Love

The love between Adam Sandler and Emily Watson in Punch Drunk Love is weird and inexplicable, but that’s part of what makes it so charming and identifiable. The intensity between the two when they are lying in bed whispering (bizarre and violent) nothings to each other matches anything that ever appeared on screen between Hepburn and Tracy or Bogart and Bacall.

10. Love Actually

Top 10 Valentine’s Day Movies for the Out of Love

1. Fatal Attraction
2. Closer

The ultimate love-is-phony movie. When you see a couple falling in love and you feel yourself getting jealous, pop in Closer to see all you’re not missing (including Julia Roberts at her most potty-mouthed).

3. Dial ‘M’ for Murder
4. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
5. In the Company of Men

Whether you’re single or you just hate heterosexual white male culture, this is the movie for you. Aaron Eckhart delivers an amazing performance as a cocky, cruel, conscience-less office worker manipulating everybody and everything around him.

6. Carnal Knowledge
7. Kramer vs. Kramer
8. Network

Network is not really a movie about romance, but William Holden’s affair with Faye Dunaway and the subsequent collapse of his marriage gives the film a beating heart. The brief appearance by Beatrice Straight as Holden’s wife earned her an Academy Award despite its brevity, and it is a human, searing monologue about the cost of betrayal and infidelity.

9. The Rules of Attraction
10. O

Based on Shakespeare’s Othello, O is in many ways the opposite of Romeo & Juliet – the relationship here collapses not because of the strength of the love but because of its weakness, which allows Mehki Phifer’s character to succumb to paranoia and mistrust.

The US faces two options. The first option is to take the election as a sign that it ought not seriously pursue a negotiation to come up with a two-state solution anytime soon. The second option is to take the election as a sign that the US needs to put enormous pressure on Israel to attempt a peaceful settlement with Palestine, knowing full well this will lead to a collapse of the governing coalition (IF Kadima is able to form a majority in the first place), hoping that what emerges from such a collapse will be better than what exists now.

George Mitchell and Barack Obama have some serious thinking to do. Personally, I’m favorably inclined toward the latter option. The Israelis need to be pushed, and pushed hard, lest the entire concept of a two-state solution be abandoned by the Palestinians in favor of a push for full voting rights. The Palestinians know that the demographics are strongly in their favor, and once they start pushing for the vote, Israel (and the US) will be put in an extremely difficult position. If a new election is held in Israel soon enough, and it is clear to the Israeli people that the US needs (or at least really, really wants) Israel to be a credible negotiator for peace, then there might still be hope before the prospect of a two-state solution completely evaporates. But things are really getting seriously problematic here, and it would be helpful if an increasing number of Americans realize that.

Update: I may have spoken too soon about the non-feasibility of a Kadima-Likud coalition. Bloomberg reports that there’s still a chance of Netanyahu and Livni joining forces:

In the absence of a clear winner, Livni and Netanyahu already have begun to engage in talks with smaller parties to see who can forge a majority in the 120-member Knesset. Although Livni’s Kadima party won 28 seats, compared with 27 for Netanyahu’s Likud, a stronger showing by parties in accord with Netanyahu’s views gives him more natural allies in forming the next government.

Livni isn’t out of the picture: Netanyahu may be slow to embrace parties such as the National Union and Jewish Home because their advocacy of Israeli settlements in the West Bank would portray him as intransigent in the eyes of the international community, and limit his negotiating flexibility.

“Netanyahu doesn’t want to be a hostage to the right wing,” says Shmuel Sandler, a political scientist at Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv. “That’s why he will ultimately try to bring in Kadima.”

This stands in contrast to things I’ve read elsewhere which have indicated that a unity government is unlikely. But if this is true, and Netanyahu and Livni reach out to each other and form a coalition, it’s not an exaggeration to say that they could be saving the state of Israel as we know it – there are still plenty of obstacles in their way, and the rightward shift in Israeli politics is still a gigantic problem, but it would at least preserve hope. One hopes the Obama administration is pushing as hard as it can for such a coalition.

Yesterday President Obama tapped Bruce Riedel, a retired CIA official now at the Brookings Institution, to chair the strategy review. He will work alongside Richard Holbrooke, the special envoy to the region, and Michele Flournoy, the new undersecretary of defense for policy (formerly the president of the Center for a New American Security). The results of this review – most significantly the definition of our strategic goals – will be of central importance to how this war is waged and whether we get dragged into a quagmire.

Many preliminary views have already been aired in different quarters. At Obama’s press conference on Monday, he was asked about his strategy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan, or what policymakers are beginning to refer to as “Af-Pak” to emphasize the two states’ interconnectedness. He gave no grand statement of our strategic goals, but he did make this statement, flagged by Spencer Ackerman, that could be an indication of his thinking (emphasis mine):

You’ve got the Taliban and Al Qaeda operating in the [tribal areas] and these border regions between Afghanistan and Pakistan. And what we haven’t seen is the kind of concerted effort to root out those safe havens that would ultimately make our mission successful.

This echoes the words of others in the administration. Vice President Biden, in his speech in Munich, defined the goal in Afghanistan as “a stable Afghanistan that’s not a haven for terrorists.” And Defense Secretary Gates, in a recent congressional hearing, insisted on the need for “modest, realistic goals” in Afghanistan to ensure “an Afghan people who do not provide a safe haven for Al Qaeda.” But “[i]f we set as the goal a Central Asian Valhalla,” Gates said, ” we will lose.”

The essence of these statements seems to indicate that the administration is inclined to limit our strategy in Af-Pak to the rooting out of Al Qaeda, in contrast to a more ambitious agenda of building a functioning democracy. The counterargument to this strategy can be found in these two posts at Foreign Policy’s fantastic new blog, Shadow Government: Notes from the Loyal Opposition, which gathers conservative foreign policy thinkers to comment on Obama’s foreign policy actions. The first of those two posts quotes Gen. Petraeus’s strategic vision for Afghanistan:

First and foremost, our forces and those of our Afghan partners have to strive to secure and serve the population. We have to recognize that the Afghan people are the decisive “terrain.” And together withour Afghan partners, we have to work to provide the people security, to give them respect, to gain their support, and to facilitate the provision of basic services, the development of the Afghan Security Forces in the area, the promotion of local economic development, and the establishment of governance that includes links to the traditional leaders in society and is viewed as legitimate in the eyes of the people.

The second post expands on this sentiment:

Denial of space to terrorists in Afghanistan is a negative goal that must be matched with a positive agenda to promote good governance and the hard and soft infrastructure of development.  Former State Department counterterrorism advisor Dave Kilcullen and colleagues make the case here for an Afghanistan policy that combines Gates’ two “no’s” – no sanctuary for terrorists with global reach and no regional war over the spoils of a Balkanized Afghanistan – with the “yes” of building a sustainable system of governance that meets the needs of the Afghan people.

I’m writing this post more for the purposes of defining the terms of the debate than to editorialize myself, but at this stage it strikes me that the more ambitious view of our strategic goals contains a limited degree of truth in the sense that the elimination of a safe haven for Al Qaeda is likely only achievable if the Afghan people are provided with basic necessities and some sort of stable governance. Otherwise we will be perpetually trapped in a situation where we can smack down Al Qaeda all we want but it will always have room to emerge again like a weed.

But the ultimate goal there is still centered on reducing the threat of Al Qaeda, and “basic necessities and some sort of stable governance” is a far cry from insisting on a flourishing democracy. Instead of a formal insistence on democracy, it seems to me we should be working to develop a governing structure that is (1) legitimate in the eyes of the Afghan people and (2) stable. This need not be a democracy, and it allows for a degree of corruption, but it is realistic.

In a couple months, when the strategy review is concluded, we’ll see where the Obama administration comes down on this debate. It’s worth noting that the review itself is extremely encouraging. The Bush administration suffered in both Iraq and Afghanistan from a failure to define clear strategic goals. It appears that the Obama administration is not eager to repeat that mistake.

Late update: Nothing in this post takes away from my love for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington or this episode of the West Wing.