It now looks like the candidate who boasted that he knew more than the generals will be a President who appoints them and asks their advice. There has been considerable criticism of this from those concerned about a concentration of civilian power in the hands of...
Given the low salaries many of us start out at, we probably overly identify with the crisis contained within this trailer (no significant spoilers):
This week, more news from the relief effort and typhoon Haiyan and how the events in the Philippines threaten to overshadow the on-going climate negotiations in Warsaw. The Security and Relief...
Today's thought experiment: AÂ foreign national is killed in your state, igniting emotional protests and a road blockade by members of his community. Your state is almost entirely economically...
Yes, the war in Iraq is tied to the problem of transnational terrorism that America experienced on 9/11. The Iraq war has increased the threat of transnational terror -- and this is the "consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services" in the US. From the NY Times, to be published September 24:A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.The classified National Intelligence...
This week: Michelle Malkin and her distaste for those who violate the due process rights of accused terrorists. No, I'm not kidding.It is remarkable that some simply can't see the parallel between the case that has Malkin up in arms and the debate over detainees in Cuba. For Malkin, the former is an example of a principled human rights case while the latter an example of anti-American-liberals who want to free terrorists. Guess the identity of the accused is the elephant in the room.Via Crooks and Liars.Filed as: Due Process
Question of the day: are we winning?Answer:Asked point-blank whether the United States is winning in Iraq, Abizaid replied: "Given unlimited time and unlimited support, we're winning the war."In other words--no. We don't have unlimited time, and its rather clear that the Administration hasn't offered unlimited resources to its Commanders in Iraq. We've never been close to 200,000 troops in-country. Though....The general's comments effectively ended hopes for a big troop withdrawal from Iraq this year, which had long been the military's target for reducing forces. As violence has intensified...
William Dobson has a piece in the current issue of Foreign Policy (subscription required, but I'll bet if you google around you can find a copy of the text someplace) provocatively titled "The Day Nothing Much Changed." In brief, Dobson argues that the terrorist attacks didn't change much about world politics, and that the really important change happened fifteen years earlier when the Soviet Union broke up -- the system went from bipolar to unipolar, with all of the attendant instability of a unipolar world simply waiting for an opportune moment to manifest itself. It just so happened that...
...or the lenders that prey on them?Conservative Congressman Blocking Crackdown on Predatory Lenders Targeting U.S. TroopsGlad he has a link on his website so that vistors can send a message of support to our troops. Guess that makes the mugging he is facilitating behind their backs okie dokie. Filed as: Geoff Davis
The recent flap about Pope Benedict XVI's remarks in a lecture at the University of Regensburg has been fascinating (in a somewhat macabre way) to watch. As Abu Aardvark has noted, the popular reaction to the remarks looks like a speeded-up film of the reaction to the Danish cartoons of the Prophet last year: various populist Islamist groups have seized parts of the lecture, pulled them out of context, and slotted them into a general narrative of Islamic persecution by 'the West.' Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has even explicitly declared that the Pope's remarks are part of a new "crusade"...
...since the Mets last won a division title. Hopefully they are not done. Gonna be an exciting October.Filed as: Mets
...with thunderous applause?There seems to have been a coup in Thailand.The BBC reports that:A faction of the Thai military led by the army chief says it has overthrown Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.Soldiers have occupied the prime minister's offices and surrounded them with tanks, while leaders of the coup attempt have gone to meet the king.Mr Thaksin, who is at the UN in New York, declared a state of emergency and said he had removed the army chief. I had thought that Thailand was a solid democracy, but I guess it is not so, or at least not so much.There has been pressure growing on...