Foreign Policy

At least The New York Times remembers that we’re at war. On Saturday, it published a remarkable piece by a remarkable reporter, Dexter Filkins, suggesting that Afghan President Hamid Karzai has lost virtually all interest in the anti-Taliban struggle that we are waging on his behalf. On Sunday, another extraordinary war correspondent, Anthony Shadid, reported on an attack by men in army uniform on Iraq’s central bank.

The news that Afghanistan's mineral wealth could exceed $1 trillion is an important opportunity for both Kabul and Washington to change the narrative from counterinsurgency to locally controlled sustainable development.

By doing so, the government of Hamid Karzai and the Obama administration can leverage a range of converging interests in South and Central Asia to put Afghanistan and the region finally on the only viable path to security -- rising economic prosperity in the larger region.

Four days after Israeli commandos stormed a humanitarian aid flotilla bound for the Gaza Strip, killing nine passengers and igniting an international firestorm, several hundred Palestinian demonstrators guided a nine-meter wooden model of the raided boat, the Mavi Marmara, on a march through the West Bank village of Bil’in. Adorned on both sides with the star and crescent of the Turkish flag, the patchwork vessel had been mounted on a car and steered toward the Israeli-built security fence, which cuts through the village and has since 2005 inspired regular protests there.

When the White House announced its National Security Strategy last month, it titled it A Blueprint for Pursuing the World That We Seek. A better title might have been The Fun Is Definitely Over. The document used the phrase "hard choices" three times, called for "a disciplined approach to setting priorities" and predicted "trade-offs among competing programs and activities." The nature of those trade-offs was never spelled out, but the implication was clear: America doesn't have as much money and power as we once thought.

Last week the U.N.'s senior official for extrajudicial executions, Philip Alston, argued in a critical report and remarks delivered in Geneva, Switzerland, that the United States should explain the legal rationale for the CIA's campaign of drone strikes in northwest Pakistan, which he characterized as "a vaguely defined license to kill" that has created "a major accountability vacuum."

"Ronald Reagan Was the Ultimate Hawk."

Not so much. These days, virtually every time someone on the American right bashes President Barack Obama for kowtowing to dictators or failing to shout that we're at war, they light a votive candle to Ronald Reagan.

This week, Elliott Abrams, the former Bush official and noted neoconservative, wrote an essay in the Weekly Standard attacking the Obama administration for not more forcefully defending Israel during the flotilla crisis. Abrams said the White House had joined an anti-Israeli “lynch mob.” Over the course of the article, he used the metaphor six times.

An excerpt from the conclusion of The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris, forthcoming by Peter Beinart, about learning from American history that America can live safely and profitably in the world without dominating it.

An Israeli journalist named Eitan Haber recently made an intriguing proposal. When the next ship determined to puncture Israel’s blockade comes steaming toward the Gaza Strip, Israel should let it through on one condition: Its crew must bring food and supplies not only to the suffering people of Gaza, but to Israeli Staff Sergeant Gilad Shalit, who Hamas is holding captive. The activists should deliver the aid with a public demand: Release Shalit immediately, without conditions.

When Gov. Sonny Perdue, a free-trade Republican, heads a Georgia agriculture trade delegation to Cuba next week, what should he expect to accomplish? Until Washington gets out of the way, probably not much.

The Cuba embargo and its intended target, Fidel Castro, have now survived 11 U.S. presidents. Though Barack Obama relaxed nearly all restrictions on travel and remittances for Cuban Americans last fall, he has so far done little for U.S. agriculture interests looking to expand the Cuban market.