Getting Burma out of the cold would mean that millions of Burmese citizens will be able to live with a modicum of freedom and dignity. The reconciliation process is moving forward there, and deploying smart power – the initial premise of the Clinton State Department – to support those efforts, not with sticks but carrots, not with bombs but words, should be the model going forward.

At the beginning of his conference call today, deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes mentioned the London conference attended by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She met with coalition partners and members of the Libyan opposition, and he said the conference agreed on a dual track of responsibilities for the mission. But he also let slip, in reference to another question, that the conference discussed planning for a post-Gadhafi Libya. That may be prudent, but you basically have a set of officials far removed from the ground making decisions on the future of a country while running a military mission that supposedly does not include a mandate for regime change. In fact, the leaders at the London conference all agreed that Gadhafi had to go.

Bahraini civil rights activists plan to march again on Friday in defiance of monarchy and continuing brutal crackdown.

The Bahraini monarchy is continuing its repression and crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.

While we hear that Secretary of State Clinton is heading to Egypt and will meet with Libyan opposition leaders and Obama and his advisors consider how to respond to Gadaffi’s massacres, we’ve seen no support for the legitimate demands of people in Bahrain and Iraq. Now with people in the streets of Saudi Arabia, it’s likely that silence will only deepen.

At the same time Obama is publicly supporting the King of Bahrain, there’s word the White House is considering military actions in support of Libyan revolutionaries – but there’s a problem. The revolutionaries don’t want it.

Amid reports of at least 250 protesters killed today alone, scores of Libyan diplomats resigning and trying to distance themselves from Gaddafi and news that the airspace over Tripoli has been closed, making evacuations impossible, there are reports that Gaddafi is going to address the nation shortly – or possibly hold an interview according to [...]

Washington’s response to the massacre and uprising in Libya is to add new twitter feeds. Activists in Libya have apparently taken over Benghazi and are not in the streets of Tripoli.

The news from Iran is truly disturbing as we hear that members of parliament are calling for the arrest and execution of leaders of the opposition Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi and learn of the deaths of two protesters yesterday.

By and large, the Obama Administration response to this admittedly difficult challenge has been not-horrible. But both Frank Wisner’s selection as envoy (which would have been horrible even without the Patton Boggs connection, given his ties to his daddy’s coup-happy CIA, Enron, and AIG) and Hillary’s outspoken support for Omar Suleiman were unforced errors.