Wow

US totally grifted by random Afghan:

For months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan leaders to end the war appeared to be showing promise, if only because of the appearance of a certain insurgent leader at one end of the table: Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban movement.

But now, it turns out, Mr. Mansour was apparently not Mr. Mansour at all. In an episode that could have been lifted from a spy novel, United States and Afghan officials now say the Afghan man was an impostor, and high-level discussions conducted with the assistance of NATO appear to have achieved little.

“It’s not him,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul intimately involved in the discussions. “And we gave him a lot of money.”

It really just kind of sums everything up, huh.

Here we go

It seems the ever-restrained Texas Board of Education is now on a mission to remove "Muslim propaganda" from our nation's poor, defenseless textbooks.

It's no surprise at all--it's perfectly to be expected, right on schedule, really--but it still blows.

Well, I'll be

Turns out Obama sent Netanyahu a message after all.

Oy gevalt

It seems Turkey's Prime Minister Erdoğan is making vague threats to expel 100,000 Armenians currently working in Turkey "should it become necessary" because...the U.S. and Sweden decided to call the WWI massacre a genocide.

This sort of thing regarding non-Turkish and/or non-Muslim minorities is not new in Turkey's history, but this particular example of it seems rather boneheaded. Armenia isn't even directly involved, so far as I know. If the aim is for Turkey to avoid looking bad (where "bad" is taken to mean "perpetrator of genocide" or at least "mean to Armenians"), then this sort of thing doesn't really help.

U.S. hiding its teeth very well

There was an AIPAC meeting yesterday. Benjamin Netanyahu and Hillary Clinton both spoke at it.

Bibi at AIPAC:

“The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 years, and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today,” Mr. Netanyahu said to the group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. “Jerusalem is not a settlement; It’s our capital.”

Clinton at AIPAC:

She warned that the Obama administration would push back “unequivocally” when it disagreed with the Israeli government’s policies. But she reaffirmed that America’s support for Israel was “rock solid, unwavering, enduring and forever.” [...] “There must be no gap between the United States and Israel on security,” she said to loud applause.

As for how far off we are from anything remotely resembling a rational state of affairs:

“I thought she was excellent,” said Hal Rosnick of Easton, Conn. “She wants the parties to get back to indirect negotiations.” But Diane Hornstein of Chicago, said, “I would like her to recognize that Jerusalem is not a settlement. There’s no evenhandedness in the demands made of Israel.”

Wooo! Indirect negotiations!

To be clear, "indirect negotiations" means George Mitchell talking to the PA in Ramallah, driving over to Jerusalem, talking to Bibi's government, then driving back to Ramallah, and so on ad nauseam. That this is the goal--for Clinton to smooth things over enough for Bibi and Abu Mazen to consent to essentially sit with their backs turned and have their poor friend play the "Bibi says you're a stupidhead," "Well, tell him HE'S A STUPIDHEAD" "...Abu Mazen says you're a stupidhead" game--is really all you need to know.

Another Quartet statement, cont.

Rosemary Hollis at FP's Middle East Channel has much more to say on the Quartet statement, though the upshot is basically the same:

All that being said, this latest Quartet initiative does not constitute a breakthrough. It provides no new ways to oblige the parties to make "the difficult choices" required to deliver "an independent, democratic and viable Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel." That will require more than an end to settlement expansion. It will require the removal of a good many settlements plus land swaps.

What she says it does do is hopefully give Abu Mazen cover to begin proximity talks despite the settlement debacle during Biden's Israel visit, as well as give the US the opportunity to "use the Quartet as a vehicle to send a strong message to the Israeli government that Washington's support is not automatic."

I don't see this as all that strong of a message to that effect in the light of the U.S.'s fairly rapid drawdown of displeasure since the incident. Washington needs to make a much sharper gesture than what we've seen if that's the message it wants to send.