Are there any blogs devoted to the problem with Brookings? It has played a big role in the lead up to the Iraq war and now seems to be on the side of human rights violations, so they could use some sustained scrutiny. Are there any blogs doing that?

WaPo is now reporting that Obama is drafting an executive order that would give the president the power to imprison people he doesn't like (because they might be terrorists, of course) just because he thinks they might, at some point in time, hurt America. Yep, preventive detention coming soon.

According to the article Obama fears that any attempt to get this plan through Congress as an actual law, would be too contentious and could splinter the Democratic Party. Well, we certainly wouldn't want any kind of long, thorough public debate on this, would we? And making elected officials go on record with a vote? Oh my no.

So, no executive action on DADT or DOMA, but "lock 'em up and throw away the key"? You betcha.

and we can go right on saying "see we told you so, what fools you were to believe, we were right and you were wrong, nyah nyah nyah nyah" -- and meanwhile, we're so busy doing that we forget that there are other things we MUST do in order to bring about those changes in policy. It's so much more fun to go, 'nyay nyah nyah nyah' in our self-righteous glory, isn't it?

He's not afraid to act, demonstrably, in decisive ways. Of course, the pirates were just poor kids, right, who hadn't done anything wrong, a bunch of teenagers taking hostages for fun and profit. Cory Cramer goes on:

Obama hasn’t been afraid to put pressure on Pakistan, and he has basically ignored the crazy pigmies who are in charge of North Korea. Good moves all.

Obama’s real test has been—and still is—Iran. Even with American troops surrounding the country, Obama has lain off any ‘Axis of Evil’ comments during the recent protests, understanding that family fights will stay that way until an outsider intervenes. It has by far been Obama’s sharpest move as President.

If the Iranian revolution is successful, Israeli pressure for an attack will fall on deaf ears and the focus can then be shifted to reconciling with the Palestinians. By staying out of the Iranian revolution, showing a desire to leave a stable Iraq, and a willingness to pressure Pakistan, Obama will have positioned himself as an honest broker when it comes to Israel.

I’m not saying all the problems will be resolved, but the potential for some sort of progress will be higher than it has been in over a decade. And I wish President Obama the best of luck.

That's a change.

Reuters reports a shakeup in the staffing lineup between the State Department and the National Security Council. Doesn't look to me like Dennis Ross's voice will keep getting drowned out; the approach the Clinton Administration took, with Ross on point, may be getting a broader theatre.

Officials offered no detailed explanation for Ross's move from the State Department to the White House National Security Council, where his mandate appears to be considerably broader.

He will become a special assistant to the president and an NSC senior director with overall responsibility for a region that includes the Middle East, the Gulf, Afghanistan, Pakistan and South Asia, said Mike Hammer, and NSC spokesman.

Although a Soviet expert by training, Ross is best known for spearheading President Bill Clinton's efforts to broker peace agreements between Israel and the Palestinians and between Israel and Syria.

That's a change.

So's the approach to Somalia.

The government has also tried to rally other foreign support, especially from the United States, which has long worried that Somalia could become a base for al-Qaeda to launch terrorist attacks such as the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
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U.S. and Somali officials say that possibly hundreds of fighters from Afghanistan, Pakistan and other nations are fighting alongside the Islamist rebel group known as al-Shabab, which the United States has designated a terrorist group. U.S. officials have accused Eritrea of sending weapons to the rebels, who have taken over much of Mogadishu and southern Somalia.

Besides sending weapons, the United States recently committed $10 million to help revive the Somali army and the police, who in the 1970s were one of the best-trained forces on the continent but collapsed when the last central government fell in 1991. The United States has been sharing intelligence with the government, according to the U.S. official, and a group of Somali political leaders from various regions of the country have been invited to Washington to develop a strategy for fighting the rebels.
"U.S. support is very, very firm," said the Somali foreign minister, Mohamed Omaar, speaking by telephone during a recent visit to Washington. "They are very clear that they are in support of this government politically, financially, diplomatically."

The Obama administration's approach is different in many respects from that of the Bush administration, which focused almost exclusively on targeting several suspects in the embassy bombings and other rebel leaders with alleged al-Qaeda ties.

The Bush administration paid a group of notorious Somali warlords to hunt terrorism suspects. But the policy backfired, giving rise to a diverse Islamist movement, including al-Shabab, which gained popularity by defeating the hated warlords. The Bush administration then tried backing an Ethiopian invasion in 2006 to overthrow the Islamists and install a transitional government, a move that triggered the al-Shabab rebellion that continues today. The Bush administration conducted airstrikes targeting al-Qaeda suspects, but only one of those targeted was ever confirmed killed.

Meanwhile, the rebels continued to advance across southern Somalia and eventually helped force the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops this year.

To cut off the rebels' weapons and supplies, the United States has stepped up pressure on Eritrea, and foreign warships patrolling Somali waters to combat piracy have begun blocking cargo ships heading to the rebel-held port of Kismaayo in southern Somalia.

Changes the world sees. Is Iran the test Joe Biden predicted? (Joe Biden's not the idiot the media wants you to think he is, by the bye.) Ahmadinejad's pissed off at Obama. My way of thinking, that's all to the good. People who are pissed off don't think straight, and often their native cunning and canniness deserts them in the heat of all that adrenaline.

The Independent sums it up nicely, though: Obama sees that the US cannot bend the world to its will. How much less like Bush can one be?

In fact, both sides are wrong. Mr Obama has changed the parameters of American foreign policy, in the Middle East in particular, and the consequences have been immediate. His Cairo address to the Islamic world was a remarkable event in itself; it was followed a few days later by an election in Lebanon that amounted to a defeat for Iran and a victory for pro-Western forces. Well before that, his overtures to Iran had signalled to both the Tehran regime and its opponents that they were not dealing with a President Bush. These overtures, beyond doubt, changed the dynamic of the recent election, and helped set in motion events that have shaken the Islamic Republic to its foundations.

An "Obama effect" is also at work on the most intractable regional dispute of all, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His own background has helped: what other president could so powerfully have used the example of the US civil rights struggle to argue non-violence to the Palestinians. Simultaneously, he has warned Israel that settlement expansion must stop, perhaps placing the Jewish state and its key ally on a collision course. Already he has changed some long-held assumptions, if not yet the underlying realities.

But Mr Obama is attempting something else, that offers an equal contrast with his predecessor. Subtly, but unmistakably, he is telling America about the limits of its power. Maybe he would have preferred not to criticise Iran so harshly, knowing that his words would only enable the regime to blame the US for all its ills, and depict its opponents as stooges of "the Great Satan" – in essence the strategy used by Fidel Castro in his half-century of successful resistance to American pressure. But the violence left him no alternative. Not by coincidence, Mr Obama is reshaping Washington's bankrupt Cuba policy as well. In both instances, the underlying message is the same. However much it might wish it, America cannot bend the world to its will.

Yea, verily, the process of change is slow and will be frustrating. But it's already in motion.

change I can believe in, or support, or defend. Regardless of the wonders this or any president may be performing in other arenas.

I'm just not comfortable with stroke-of-the-pen decisions that amount to "trust us - we're only going to hold the non-American terrorist-types," and I don't understand why any American who values his or her freedom would be.