by Dan Nexon | 16 Sep 2006 | Featured
Rajiv Chandrasekaran's report on how the Bush administration staffed the CPA raises an interesting counterfactual: What if the Bush administration had, in fact, bothered to develop a post-war plan for Iraq? Would it have made any difference given whom they chose to run the show?O'Beirne's staff posed blunt questions to some candidates about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is...
by Rodger Payne | 15 Sep 2006 |
Film #4 "The Quiet American" (2002). We viewed it Tuesday.Readings for Thursday: Wilson, Woodrow, “Fourteen Points Speech,” 1918. Kagan, Robert, “Power and Weakness,” Policy Review, June/July 2002, pp. 3-28. After several films about World War II and discussion about political realism, it was time to move on to a film about a post-war conflict and liberal idealism. Wilson's address, of course, is a classic statement of American liberalism. This...
by Rodger Payne | 14 Sep 2006 | Featured
These are the opening paragraphs of today's BBC story about the IAEA's reaction to a much-discussed August 23 congressional report, which played up Iran's alleged nuclear "threat": The UN nuclear watchdog has protested to the US government over a report on Iran's nuclear programme, calling it "erroneous" and "misleading".In a leaked letter, the IAEA said a congressional report contained serious distortions of the agency's own findings on Iran's...
by Peter | 13 Sep 2006 | Featured
Seriously, its like shooting Fish in a Barrel.Today, we're "safer, but we are not yet safe." In fact, "The safety of America depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad." Its an important struggle, "In truth, it is a struggle for civilization."To paraphrase Jon Stewart, If the future of civilization depends on winning in Iraq, why not send just a few more troops? You know, to make sure we win and all.Oh, right, it was...
by Dan Nexon | 11 Sep 2006 | Featured
On the morning of September 11, 2001, I drove my wife to the Nanuet train station. We said goodbye and she got on the train to begin her commute into Manhattan. I went home and took a shower.Sometime later that morning I went downstairs to the basement of our townhouse, which doubled as my office. I started working on one of my projects. I can't recall whether I was revising chapters of my dissertation or working on an article-length project....
by Peter | 11 Sep 2006 | Featured
How many ways is Sept 10, 2006 different from Sept 10, 2001? Five years ago, there was a football game on in Prime Time, the Yankees heading for the post season, a Bush presidency struggling a bit to find its legs in the world of international affairs, and a general sense that tomorow would be like today, a regular work day, conducting the Nation's Business. It wasn't, of course, and that's why despite the fact that tonight, as you have...
by Dan Nexon | 9 Sep 2006 | Featured
Does anyone else find Jennifer Medina's New York Times story either inadvertently misleading or downright disingenuous? The report, "Lieberman Points Out a Turnabout by Lamont," claims that:Ned Lamont, who this week chastised Senator Joseph I. Lieberman for his public rebuke of President Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, wrote to Mr. Lieberman at the time praising the eloquence of his speech on the Senate floor.The New York Times...
by Bill Petti | 8 Sep 2006 | Featured
The Senate today released portions of their official inquiry into pre-Iraq intelligence, an inquiry that compared pre-war estimates with post-war findings. Specifically, the declassified documents focused on purported links between Hussein and al-Qaeda as well as the impact of the Iraqi National Congress’ misinformation regarding Saddam’s regime.The results are not (or at least, shouldn’t be) surprising. Some highlights:“Saddam has viewed...
by Rodger Payne | 7 Sep 2006 |
Film #3 "Saving Private Ryan" (1998). We viewed it Tuesday.Reading for Thursday: Daniel Warner, "Two Realist Readings of the Tragic in International Relations," 20 International Relations 2006, pp. 225-230.Warner reviews the recent books by John J. Mearsheimer (The Tragedy of Great Power Politics) and Richard Ned Lebow (The Tragic Vision of Politics: Ethics, Interests and Orders).While both Mearsheimer and Lebow discuss the tragic dimensions of...
by Bill Petti | 7 Sep 2006 | Featured
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
by Peter | 6 Sep 2006 | Featured
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...
by Bill Petti | 6 Sep 2006 | Featured
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...