In keeping with the Bill and Rodger theme, perhaps a bit more moral clairity on Rumsfeld's recent statements is in order.Courtsey of Tom Toles in today's WP:Moral Clarity is always appreciated in instances like this...Filed as: Rumsfeld
In keeping with the Bill and Rodger theme, perhaps a bit more moral clairity on Rumsfeld's recent statements is in order.Courtsey of Tom Toles in today's WP:Moral Clarity is always appreciated in instances like this...Filed as: Rumsfeld
This must be a joke, albeit one that requires the audience to provide the punchline. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to the American Legion, August 29, 2006: "Any kind of moral and intellectual...
Exhibit A: Rep. Tom Lantos"The international community must use all our available means to stiffen Lebanon's spine and to convince the government of Lebanon to have the new UNIFIL troops on the...
I am officially declaring that all future invokations of the reputation frame (and its cousin, the Green Lantern Theory of Geopolitics, which focuses on the importance of 'will') by neoconservatives...
Everyone knows that there are 9 planets:Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Plutowhich you remember by saying My Very Eager Mother Just Served Us Nine Pickels (or some variation on the theme.Except that now, there are only 8 planets.Pluto just got demoted.So, a once critical fact, an immutable truth about the nature of the solar system has now changed.Plus, I really feel bad for all those Pluto scholars out there who once studied the most mysterious planet and now just study a dwarf object or whatever. Its kind of like being a specialist on the Soviet General...
The University of Louisville semester started this week and I'm holding the second session of my two classes Thursday. One of those courses is new for me: "(Global) Politics Through Film." For the past 15 years, this class was taught without the (Global) by a now-retired colleague who was interested primarily in domestic American politics.Consider this post the first in a semester-long series relating to the class (find the syllabus here).Film #1: "Casablanca." Students viewed it with me on Tuesday.Reading for Thursday: Tilly, Charles, “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime,” in...
Dan encouraged me to mention a new book that some Duck readers might find interesting, Hitting First: Preventive Force in U.S. Security Strategy (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006), edited by William W. Keller and Gordon R. Mitchell of Pitt's Matthew Ridgway Center for International Security Studies. Their chapter 1, "Preemption, Prevention, Prevarication" is available on the press website.Disclosure: the volume includes my chapter, "Deliberate before Striking First?"There's a nice review in the July 20 edition of Pittsburgh's City Paper and I've blogged about the book throughout its...
"We're talking a whole lot worse than Three Mile Island," he said. "If an insider knows where the target sets are, in other words, the way to damage the reactor or to blow a hole in the spent fuel pool, it would be a hell of lot worse than anything we've ever seen in this country before." --- Peter Stockman, Senior Investigator, Project on Government Oversight (POGO)Widely read blogger-journalists Kevin Drum and Andrew Sullivan are noting the growing questions about last week's airline terror plot and arrests. Drum points to some sources who justifiably question the ease of making binary...
Craig Murray was the British ambassador to Uzbekistan, until he was recalled in October 2004. His posting was supposed to run through November 2005, so he was clearly sacked from this position, as they say in the UK. In early 2005, Murray resigned from the Foreign Office.Before his dismissal, Murray was publicly criticizing the human rights policies of the Uzbek government -- and privately condemning the Blair government for emulating the US and outsourcing torture. Murray says his dismissal was politically motivated, while the British government says the diplomatic recall was for...
Ned Lamont's primary victory over Joe-Mentum Lieberman was certainly seen as a watershed political moment, where the anti-war message toppled an incumbent. Given that incumbents in Congress have something like a 90-95% success rate in re-election (actually, I think its higher than that, but i'm blogging at 6 am and not inclined to look it up), defeating a sitting Senator, former Presidential candidate and Vice-Presidential nominee is a pretty big deal. Its clear that the anti-war / anti-Bush vote is significant, not just within the Democratic party, but within Republican ranks as well. But...
An addendum (and yes, I still have internet access) to my post on progressive foreign policy. Ron Suskind, in his interview with Salon, gets it mostly right:One of the things that I think is clear about the moment we're in now is that in a way this is a new kind of war, a new kind of conflict we're fighting now, with a kind of global insurgency. We know insurgencies, we've seen many of them through history, and very often it's the case where gleaming armies come down from on high with banners waving and march in to some homeland or other to fight insurgents. It almost never works.Whatever...
The movers are here. My internet connection is scheduled to cut out any time now. I've had a great time at OSU. The Mershon Center is a wonderful institution, with terrific academics and staff. They've built an exciting intellectual climate. Thanks to everyone for having me out and for making my stay so interesting and productive. If you are looking for post-doctoral fellowships in international studies, then you should definitely apply to Mershon. The bad news is that my book manuscript isn't quite done. I've still got some line-edit style revisions to complete. But that's also the good...