added Charlie Rose to the TiVo season pass

Can't sleep tonight. Got up to grab a quick snack and watch a few minutes of TV which quickly turned into 25. On PBS, Charlie Rose was interviewing retired General Jack Keane about the situation in Iraq and the Middle East. It was refreshing to hear a journalist carefully parsing out his questions while respectfully acknowledging the complexity of the situation and the experience of the person in front of him, and enthralling to listen to the very measured but very knowledgeable and direct answers Keane gave him.

I've dropped out of knowing day to day what is going on in Iraq, but according to Keane, the end of this month will bring provincial elections that will shape the gov't much more fairly than the first go 'round due to increased Sunni enfranchisement. He's of the opinion that an Arab Muslim democracy allied with the U.S. is not just a goal, but almost an inevitability. I hope he's right.

He also talked a bit about Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, and India. An interesting point that he made about the dismal situation in Pakistan was Musharraf's easing of pressure on the Taliban once the U.S. asked for help in Afghanistan from NATO. Our inability to dedicate the number of troops to stabilize the country and subsequent request for assistance made us look weak to Musharraf, leading him to hedge his bets and try to appear less an American toady to the Islamists. Another point he made was that the U.S. has been and will need to continue trying to convince India to throttle back a little on the Pakistanis, especially in Kashmir so that the Pakistanis can retrain their freed-up troops for counter-insurgency work so that they can address the growing internal dangers of Islamic fundamentalism. The fulcrums and balances are incredibly complex and bely the politics and shallow media reporting skimming over the top of them.