At Charles Krauthammer. Remind me never to make John mad.Charles Krauthammer is well known as the chief polemicist of the neo-conservative movement and op-ed guru of American unilateralism – and he has just outdone himself in writing the most thoroughly risible piece of foreign policy commentary that I have recently seen. Indeed, it is so absurdly fanciful that it is best read as self-parody.In this new polemical burst, Krauthammer argues that the "post-Cold War era has seen a remarkable ideological experiment: Over the past 15 years, each of the three major American schools of foreign...

The always smart, always acerbic folks at Coming Anarchy have been getting their chortles by photoshopping Theodor Seuss Geisel's (aka Dr. Seuss) political cartoons from the 1940s. Dr. Seuss was a strong anti-fascist. Many of his cartoons are stinging criticisms of American isolationalists and German sympathizers. These cartoons, among others, are collected in Dr. Seuss Goes to War, by Richard H. Minear. The volume is fascinating; I highly recommend it.Here's an example of Chirol's work:Apparently this is an old feature of Chirol's, yet I don't entirely see the point of all of them. I...

Cross posted on my blog. On July 26, Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker reported in the New York Times that the US is no longer fighting a global "war on terror" (GWOT): The Bush administration is retooling its slogan for the fight against Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, pushing the idea that the long-term struggle is as much an ideological battle as a military mission, senior administration and military officials said Monday.In recent speeches and news conferences, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the nation's senior military officer have spoken of "a global struggle against violent...

Dan Darling and I have been discussing the structure of al-Qaeda. The basic question: how centralized is al-Qaeda? There's been a lot of discussion of this lately. Mark Sageman, for example, is currently plugging his own book on the subject; Sageman argues that the al-Qaeda movement is decentralized and fragmented. As Stygius notes,Marc Sageman was on Sunday's All Things Considered, discussing how al-Qaeda's fragmentation since the invasion of Afghanistan has left it metastasizing into local operations seeking legitimacy under the its banner. Highly recommended. Sageman does the kind of...

Cross-posted on my blog.Monday's Washington Post website has an interesting AP story about some Defense Department legislation proposed by Republican Senators. John McCain (previously identified as my favorite Republican member of Congress), John Warner and up to 10 other GOP Senators are supporting various amendments to a policy bill that would try to reign in the dubious treatment of various prisoners in the "war on terror.""What we're trying to do here is make sure there are clear and exact standards set for interrogation of prisoners," McCain said on the Senate floor.Actually, McCain's...

Wretched responds to the notion that there is no global Islamicist conspiracy.Or sort of. Really, it is just an excuse to attack that old nemesis: "the Left."Although the proposition that organized international terrorism does not exist may seem funny, many writers on the Left seriously believe that terrorism is a derivative phenomenon with no independent existence of its own. It is simply a reaction to Western, and particularly American oppression. It is the shadow, as it were, of the USA, which would cease to exist once the solid being that gave rise to it vanished. According to this point...

The shortest distance between a blog post on John Lott and a mention of Michael Bellesiles in that post's comments section. Today on Crooked Timber, its value was "4". The value of BeLott may be a good proxy for measuring right-left connectivity for a particular blog.Closely related functions include ConsMoore (shortest distance between a post on Ann Coulter or the equivalent and a mention of Michael Moore) and LibsMoore (shortest distance between a post on Michael Moore and a mention of Ann Coulter or the equivalent).Filed as: false equivalences

From the New York Review of Books:There is, in fact, no Iraqi insurgency. There is a Sunni Arab insurgency. And it cannot win. Neither the al-Qaeda terrorists nor the former Baathists can win. Even if the US withdrew tomorrow, neither insurgents nor terrorists would be knocking down the gates to Iraq's Presidential Palace in Baghdad.Basically, the military equation in Iraq comes down to demographics. Sunni Arabs are no more than 20 percent of Iraq's population. Even in Baghdad—once the seat of Sunni Arab power—Sunni Arabs are a minority. To succeed, the insurgency would have to win support...