I don’t know how this situation will end

I don’t know how this situation will end, except that it’s clear that forcing a state on authority-

averse Somalis didn’t work the first 15 times, and likely won’t again in the future. The big question

is, why wasn’t that obvious to “the international community”? Or — don your tin foil — maybe it

was all along.

I guess this is breaking news on which I hope to have more to write later (I have a deadline on

reporting UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots’s greenhouse-related announcements today), but I just confirmed

that Elliott Abrams, Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Near East and North

African Affairs since December 2002 and Deputy National Security Adviser for Global Democracy Strategy

since 2005 will begin work as a Senior Fellow at the new Washington offices (one block away from his

old one) of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in mid-February. Abrams, the highest-ranking neo-

conservative left in the UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots administration when it finally decamped last week,

served, along with help from Dick Cheney’s office, as the bureaucratic foil for former Secretary of

State Condoleezza Rice’s to give some momentum to the Annapolis peace process; tried to persuade the

Israelis to widen their 2006 war against Hezbollah to include Syria; and no doubt steadfastly

encouraged the Olmert government to pursue its Gaza war as vigorously and as long as possible. To the

extent that UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots influence in the Middle East has diminished, Abrams can claim a

good share of the credit. And his strategy to spread democracy globally (and especially in the Middle

East) appears to have prospered in a similar fashion.