When I was young, I dreamed of Italy. Once in a while, my father would pull out the slide projector and show us pictures from his life on a mountain near Colle Isarco, not far from Italy’s border with Austria. He taught me to speak a little in both Italian and German,...
I am so burned out on this issue, I’m ready to say we should just nuke the Liancourt Rocks (left) to end this whole thing. But it’s everywhere now in the regional media. Park pointedly won’t meet...
I found two pieces that asked similar questions to my earlier post on why this typhoon appeared to be so destructive and why similar storms in Asia are especially deadly. Both raise interesting...
Blogging is an exercise of academic freedom, like writing journal articles or books. Â Blogging is something that has evolving norms and rules, like writing journal articles or books. However, given...
New Poll: 43% Still Believe Saddam Had Something To Do With 9/11I wonder what percentage of American's lack basic critical thinking skills. Me thinks the numbers would look eerily similar...Filed as: 9/11
The Prisoner's Dilemma. A Political Science classic. You can, quite honestly, make an entire career of using it to explain just about everything that goes on in the world.Despite that fact, it still teaches us many, many interesting things, one of which is the importance of the "shadow of the future." When you start to play a series of PD games over time, the shadow of the future looms large. Thanks to Robert Axelrod, we know that the best long term strategy for an itterated game of Prisoner's Dilemma is a cooperative tit-for-tat. Now, the cooperation of tit for tat works so long as you...
It's nice to know the White House is just now accepting the fact that most of us have been fully aware of since at least the Madrid train bombings in 2004. Our own Dan Nexon has been discussing this topic for quite some time. From today's WaPo:A new counterterrorism strategy released yesterday by the White House describes al-Qaeda as a significantly degraded organization, but outlines potent threats from smaller networks and individuals motivated by al-Qaeda ideology, a lack of freedom and "twisted" propaganda about U.S. policy in the Middle East.The National Strategy for Combating Terrorism...
Classes started last week so I'm running a bit behind the news (and way behind in blogging in reaction to any of it) but Rumsfeld's recent (and oft-repeated) henny-penny arguments (thanks, Bill!) equating violent Islamist groups with Nazi Germany and invoking the world's most hackneyed foreign policy analogy -- Munich, Munich, Munich -- to advise staying the course are really starting to get to me. So in the interests of trying to restore a little sanity, I want to take a few minutes to unpack 'Munich' and the course of action to which the commonplace stands opposed ("appeasement") in order...
I took this excerpt about the new Pentagon Iraq report from the LA Times, September 2, but the news was widely circulated. However, you might have missed it because not only did the administration wait until a Friday to release bad news -- it was a Friday before a three day weekend in the midst of an east coast tropical storm!Attacks and civilian deaths in Iraq have risen sharply in recent months, with casualties increasing by 1,000 a month, and sectarian violence has engulfed larger areas of the country, the Pentagon said Friday in a strikingly dismal report to Congress.The quarterly...
It's Saturday afternoon and I have strep throat. I'm not at the APSA convention for the Labor Day weekend, but I can still be a geek: I just watched a large portion of a panel on C-SPAN 2 featuring Peter Beinart of The New Republic, paleo-con Reaganite Lawrence Korb, Jeffrey Goldberg of The New Yorker, and neocon William Kristol of The Weekly Standard.Towards the very end, Kristol made a point about how Democrats and Republicans see America's foreign policy priorities -- and security threats -- differently. He cited a public opinion poll finding that Republicans focused on the traditional...
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
I alerted regular Duck readers to the coming deluge of reputation rhetoric as the Bush administration and the RNC attempt to frame the upcoming midterm elections as a choice between ‘appeasers’ and ‘resolved warriors’. That deluge has officially begun. On Tuesday I discussed Secretary Rumsfeld's latest incoherent drivel speech. This morning’s Washington Post reports on the increase of henny-penny arguments to come:“President Bush and his surrogates are launching a new campaign intended to rebuild support for the war in Iraq by accusing the opposition of aiming to appease terrorists and cut...