Wondering why I've been eerily silent? Why my email turnaround time has dropped from near instantaneous to days?My days are spent a-writing, my nights a-packing.Want some empire-goodness? Go read Rob Farley's tirade against Niall Ferguson for inflicting Colossus upon him.

I'm currently reading a counterinsurgency classic, David Galula's Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice. Published in 1964, its a how-to manual for fighting a counterinsurgency war against a revolutionary insurgent based on the author's direct observations and experiences in Algeria,...

Just when you thought the Corner couldn't become any more of refuse pile than it already is, J-Pod brings forth a defense of his "kill them all and let g-d sort them out" approach to counter-insurgency. Turns out, he's a courageous intellectual posing the tough questions.Interesting. Seems to me...

Via Arms and Influence:Everyone remaining in southern Lebanon will be regarded as a terrorist, Israel's justice minister said yesterday as the military prepared to employ "huge firepower" from the air in its campaign to crush Hizbollah.Besides the fact that this is empirically false it's just...

Last week, my email inbox received a post from a listserv with this subject line: "Opportunity: Social Sciences/ Iraq." I don't know that the list is confidential, but I suppose one has to be a member of a particular scholarly organization to receive postings. In any event, I don't have to violate...

From this issue of Politics and Society, I offer two keywords we will probably never see next to one another again:The Strength of Weekly Ties: Relations of Material and Symbolic Exchange in the Conservative MovementThomas MedvetzUniversity of California, BerkeleyThe current Republican ascendancy...

Sad news in the Israeli-Hizbollah conflict. As most of you already know, or will know soon, an Israeli air strike killed at least 34 children.The raid on the southern village of Qana -- the bloodiest single attack in Israel's 19-day-old war on Hizbollah -- aborted U.S. Secretary of State...

Here's my State Capacity post of the week (just to continue the trend.)From Today's Washington Post:Some in Congo Long for the Order Of Late DictatorYes, folks, we're talking Mobuto Sese Seko. Who ever thought you would long for the man who invented the kleptocratic state and his leopard-skinned...

Steven Cook (who holds a PhD from my department I might add) argues in the Washington Post this morning that the current problems in the Middle East are not to be blames on President Bush's democratization strategy. It isn't that there has been too much democratization to-date, but rather too...

I've been skimming the Washington State Supreme Court decision (PDF) on gay marriage (via Andrew Sullivan), and I'm pretty appalled. My jaw started to drop when I read this line:Finally, DOMA does not violate the state constitution’s equal rights amendment because that provision prohibits laws...

I really, really hope that today's developments prove my skepticism about the efficacy of Israel's coercive pressure on Lebanon wrong.BEIRUT, Lebanon - Hezbollah politicians, while expressing reservations, have joined their critics in the government in agreeing to a peace package that includes...

This month's Foreign Policy has a forum on the Israel Lobby, building on Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer's very much discussed article in the LRB on the power of the "Israel Lobby" in producing a narrow-interest based but sub-strategically optimal US Foreign Policy in the Middle East.As I walked...