Comments & responses.

• Author: Clemons, Steve
• Position: Issues on US foreign relations

I wanted to echo some of the points that have been raised in recent issues of The National Interest, including in Dimitri Simes' editorial, "Ending the Crusade" (Jan./ Feb. 2007).

Solving Iraq, if it can be solved, now means getting real about and engaging in a broad range of Middle East deal-making between internal groups inside Iraq and among its neighbors.

It means working to establish a Palestinian state in a manner that maintains the viability and security of both Israel and Palestine. It means offering Syria a Libya-like route out of the international doghouse. It means massaging Iran's ego in the region without handing the entire Middle East over on a golden platter--which America seems to be doing with its counterproductive strategy. It means figuring out what China and Russia want most in their foreign policy objectives and doing what we can to trade their needs for our own.

This all means that we must have an end to diplomacy on the cheap--and national security on the cheap. And a surge in troop levels without a plan, without the other component parts of a credible and believable grand strategy, is sending more soldiers off to die unnecessarily--or to kill Iraqis, many who are absolutely innocent in all this mess and who will no doubt hate the United States for a long time ahead.

There are alternatives--but nearly all of them require a creative, bold approach that might enable us to leapfrog over our massive failures in the region.

STEVE CLEMONS Senior Fellow and Director, American Strategy Program, New America Foundation The Washington Note blog (http://www.thewashingtonnote.com)

In the sensationally titled "The Regime Change We Need", (Nov./Dec. 2006), Messrs. Groo and Khanna attempt to explain the failure of several fledging democracies to rein in the power of their presidents. Employing a mishmash of fleeting case studies intended to demonstrate how chief executives from Georgia to Egypt wield unfettered power, Groo and Khanna assert that development agencies need to develop "mechanisms ... to effectively contain, decentralize or counterbalance executive power." Astonishingly, the authors fail to consider the very institutions and mechanisms inherent to any functioning democracy: a functioning parliament, robust judiciary and confident civil society, all of which serve to counter-balance executive power.

Groo and Khanna are right to draw attention to executive branches' concentrations of power, particularly in nations that...