LGM has been doing the important work that I might be tackling if I weren't in the middle of moving: taking on the "ghosts of 1972" interpretation of Lamont's victory over Lieberman. Scott tackles the problems with the underlying story (Marc Schulman articulates a more reasonable version of the 1972 analogy, but I still think he's wrong). Rob eviscerates Jacob Weisberg's muddled column.I have to wonder what kind of political activity Jacob...

Students in my Intro to IR Research and World Politics classes have, on occasion, heard me rant about Wikipedia and how it is not an appropriate research source for writing papers. While useful for background information and links to other useful sites, the fundamental nature of a Wiki undercuts its reliability as a source for scholarship. Students in that class will also be familiar with the three broad approaches to knowledge that I use as...

Some thoughts that I want to throw on the table. I do not necessarily endorse the following proposal, but I think it is worth considering.1. Hezbollah is a greater threat to Israel than the Palestinians. Hezbollah is a more effective fighting force than Hamas and other Palestinian militants. Hezbollah has greater capacity to inflict punishment on Israel. Hezbollah takes a harder line on Israel than the majority of Palestinian do.2. Hezbollah...

My unscientific observation is that historians tend to be much snarkier than political scientists. Or, at least, they're better at it.These were the words of the arch-royalist Pierre de Belloy, whose Conferences des edicts de pacification (1600) has the distinction of being the longest and perhaps the most tedious tract to issue from the toleration controversy of the sixteenth century.-- E.M. Beame, "The Limits of Toleration in...

I wrote too soon.Taylor Owen points my attention to Dershowitz's latest, um, foray into social science.The oft-reported mantra that "occupation causes terrorism" is false. Occupations, like Israel's presence in the West Bank, are often the necessary result of attacks by insurgent groups and terrorists - not the other way around.History and contemporary experience make this clear.First, Palestinian terrorism began well before there was any...

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, China, and Vietnam. I picked up the book after reading a Washington Post on-line chat with Thomas Ricks, who recommended it. Its lessons from then are...

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 that in 1982, in Hama, Hafez al-Assad wiped out an uprising against his regime by slaughtering 25,000 over a weekend. And in 1991, Saddam Hussein took...

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 plain stupid from a political standpoint. Not helpful.Filed as: Israel, Lebanon

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 list norms because another blogger already posted the entire ad. Read it here. Actually, Lincoln Group has the jobs linked on its own website. The...

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 in American government has generated considerable scholarly interest in the conservative movement. Through an ethno-graphic study of the widely...

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 Condoleezza Rice's mediation efforts. Lebanon told her she was unwelcome in Beirut for talks.Israel announced a temporary suspension of air strikes, presumably...