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...

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,...

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...

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...

Two recommendations for readers of the Duck:First, a noteworthy article for those interested in analytical studies of strategic interaction as applied to terrorism appears in the recent issue of International Security. Andrew Kydd (a new addition to my department at Penn via Harvard) and Barbara Walter discuss terrorism as costly signaling and further elaborate on the numerous strategic logics of costly signaling at work in terrorist...

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 confusion about who and what is right or wrong can severely weaken the ability of free societies to persevere."Surely Rummy was counting on his audience to remember the backstory. His famous leaked memo from October 2003 was full of potential...

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 Syrian border in adequate numbers," said Tom Lantos, the ranking Democrat on the U.S. House of Representatives' International Relations Committee.Lantos said he was putting a legislative hold on Bush's proposal to provide $230 million in aid for Lebanon...

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 be renamed "henny-penny arguments", since they invoke the same feeling of hysterical irrationality that Rumsfeld originally tried to convey. In a recent speech, Secretary Rumsfeld stated......the world faces "a new type of fascism" and likened...

Its the first day of school today, such an exciting time. And what are we greeted with? A prime example of the power of globalization to shape international markets--even the vaunted US economy and Federal Reserve Board.Today, the NYT reports on the Fed's retreat/conference out in Wyoming (casual, because Fed Chair Ben Bernanke doesn't wear a tie).Econ 101 in a nutshell: the Fed sets interest rates in an attempt to manage inflation and domestic...

Turkey has long been viewed as one of a number a "pivotal states" for US foreign policy. According to scholars, These are countries whose fate determines the survival and success of the surrounding region and ultimately the stability of the international system.Turkey is additionally Samuel Huntington's prototypical "torn country;" one of several states having "a fair degree of cultural homogeneity but...divided over whether their society...