David Rohde

Keeping his promise to the people of Tunisia, Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali resigned yesterday after his own party rejected his call for the creation of an apolitical government of technocrats to ease the country’s rising political tensions. My colleague Tarek Amara reported this morning that the ongoing political instability is slowing economic growth in Tunisia just as the country’s economy was showing its first signs of life since the 2011 revolution.

For Jebali personally, his resignation is a gamble. After promising to resign if he could not form a new apolitical government, Jebali did just that on Tuesday. The prime minister’s move was seen by many in Tunisia as “a rare display of accountability by a politician,” according to The New York Times. But it also leaves Jebali without the strong backing of any major political party.

Tensions have soared in Tunisia since a leftist opposition leader, Chokri Belaid, was assassinated two weeks ago. The ruling Islamist party, Ennahda, has rejected complaints of poor governance and failing to crackdown on attacks on liquor stores and art exhibits by hardline Salafists. Instead, it has blamed Tunisian news media, secular elites and elements of the old government for its decreasing popularity.

Analysts say that Islamists in both Tunisia and Egypt have overplayed their electoral victories and underestimated the secular opposition they face. As I wrote last week, the growing divide between secularists and Islamist groups is a reflection of an epic political struggle over the role Islam will play in politics, society and life.

Khalil al-Anani, a scholar of Middle East Studies at Durham University in England, told The New York Times that Islamist governments think they can act as they wish after gaining power.

He quoted Jack Kennedy but sounded more like Lyndon Johnson.

In an audacious State of the Union address Tuesday, President Barack Obama made sweeping proposals to reduce poverty, revive the middle class and increase taxes on the “well off.” While careful to not declare it outright, an emboldened second-term president laid out an agenda that could be called a “war on inequality.”

“There are communities in this country where no matter how hard you work, it is virtually impossible to get ahead,” Obama declared in a blunt attack one a core conservative credo. “And that’s why we need to build new ladders of opportunity into the middle class for all who are willing to climb them.”

In his 1964 State of the Union address, Johnson introduced the legislation that became known as the “War on Poverty.” Those laws – along with many others he shepherded – stand today as perhaps the greatest legislative achievement of any modern president. Whether or not one agrees with him, Johnson’s laws – from the Civil Rights Act, to Medicaid, Medicare and Head Start, to sweeping federal urban renewal and education programs – changed the face of American society.

Update at 12:20 pm EST on 2/13/13:

The Veterans Administration weighed in Tuesday on the dispute between Esquire magazine and Stars and Stripes over the benefits available to the retired Navy SEAL who reportedly killed Osama Bin Laden. In an email, a Veterans Administration spokesperson laid out the benefits available to combat veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan:

- Full access to VA health care for five-years after separation for OIF/OEF/OND combat Veterans.

- Post 9-11 GI Bill Education benefits which provides tuition, fees and a monthly housing allowance.

John Brennan’s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday was a microcosm of the Obama administration’s approach to counterterrorism: The right assurances, with little transparency.

Brennan said the United States should publicly disclose when American drone attacks kill civilians. He called waterboarding “reprehensible” and vowed it would never occur under his watch. And he said that countering militancy should be “comprehensive,” not just  “kinetic,” and involve diplomatic and development efforts as well.

What any of that means in practice, though, remains unknown.

Brennan failed to clearly answer questions about the administration’s excessive embrace of drone strikes and secrecy. He flatly defended the quadrupling of drone strikes that has occurred on Obama’s watch. He gave no clear explanation for why  the public has been denied access to vital Justice Department legal opinions that give the president the power to kill U.S. citizens without judicial review. And his statement that the establishment of a special court to review the targeting of Americans was “worthy of discussion” was noncommittal.

At a faster rate than many expected, the post-Arab Spring’s Islamist governments are stumbling.

For weeks, President Mohammad Mursi has faced increasingly violent opposition in Egypt. And now the Islamist rulers of Tunisia, the birthplace of the Arab Spring, are facing growing unrest.

Across the country once considered the region’s best hope for democracy, mass protests and political paralysis have erupted following the assassination of a leading secular politician on Wednesday.

In a bold second inaugural address, one line was my favorite.

“We will defend our people and uphold our values,” President Barack Obama declared, “through strength of arms and rule of law.”

Obama was right to describe the “rule of law” as a weapon the United States can use to defend itself. But the administration’s insistence on enveloping its counter-terrorism efforts in excessive secrecy flouts the rule of law. A proud American ideal is being turned into a liability, not an asset.

“It’s not sufficient for the administration to say, ‘Trust us, we’re taking care of it,’ ” said Amrit Singh, author of a new Open Society Institute report that raises numerous questions about the United States’ use of rendition and torture since 2001. “There needs to be greater transparency.”

Viewers of Thursday’s  confirmation hearing of Defense Secretary nominee Chuck Hagel can be forgiven for thinking they were watching a years-old C-SPAN rerun. The importance of America’s intercontinental ballistic missiles dominated initial questioning. Then the war in Iraq was debated. In the end, the issue that most concerned senators from both parties was Hagel’s loyalty to Israel.

During an eight-hour hearing, the difficult decisions that the U.S. military now faces received scant attention. Vast budget cuts loom. Suicide and post-traumatic stress disorder rates are appallingly high. Diverse security threats ranging from Iran to cyber-attacks to al Qaeda in North Africa must be countered.

Overall, a more nimble, modern and smaller American military is needed, but you heard little of that in Thursday’s marathon hearing.

The partisan political theater, of course, was top-notch. Rand Paul’s declaration that he would have fired Hillary Clinton; her angry rebuttal of Ron Johnson’s insistence that the administration misled the American people about the Benghazi attack; John McCain’s continued – and legitimate – outrage at the slapdash security the State Department provided for its employees.

Amid the posturing, though, ran a separate question: what strategy, if any, does the United States have to counter the militant groups running rampant across North and West Africa? Clinton herself summed up the sad state of play during her tense exchange with McCain.

“We’ve got to get our act together,” she said.

While the attention of American politicians has rightly focused on the safety of American diplomats, the key players in battling Africa’s jihadists are local leaders and security forces. The record of the United States and its allies in training security forces in Iraq and Afghanistan is checkered at best. Africa will be yet another test.

The question from a colleague – one whose work I admire – could have come from anyone in the United States.

“So the French,” he asked, “now have their own Afghanistan?”

The answer is yes and no. Western military interventions should be carried out only as a last resort. But Mali today is a legitimate place to act.

Several thousand jihadists threaten to destabilize Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and Algeria. Beyond the human rights abuses, their attacks will discourage foreign investment, paralyze local economies and produce vast numbers of refugees. Skeptics play down the threat, but the instability these extremists create will spread over time.

WASHINGTON – Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Thursday hosted a working dinner here for Afghan President Hamid Karzai – one of her last official meetings with a foreign head of state.

On paper, Karzai’s talks with Clinton are historic. A famed American political figure is helping negotiate the end of the longest war in U.S. history – a 12-year odyssey that has claimed 2,100 American lives and more than $600 billion in treasure.

But Karzai’s visit is being greeted with a yawn. There has been more media coverage of Clinton’s exhaustive travel, physical appearance and political prospects in recent days than her wartime diplomacy.