By now we are all familiar with the current status of the civil war in Somalia. Last week, Islamic militias in Somalia seized the capital of Mogadishu, defeating the US-backed coalition of warlords. The Christian Science Monitor had an interesting article discussing the next step for the US in its bid to avoid the creation of neo-Afghanistan on the Horn of Africa. The answer--diplomatic engagement with the Islamic Courts Union. The US, it would...

During my guest stint at Lawyers, Guns and Money I got involved in a spat with Unfogged's LizardBreath over Linda Hirshman's argument that highly-educated professional women who choose to become stay-at-home moms are the contemporary Quislings of the feminist movement.Despite our disagreement, I thought LB held up her side of the argument rather well--which shouldn't be surprising, given her sterling reputation. But I also thought she ignored...

Some interesting Sunday morning reading:The Washington Post today reprints a rather lengthy cable from the US Embassy in Iraq to Main State. Its worth a read.The Post introduces the Cable: Hours before President Bush left on a surprise trip last Monday to the Green Zone in Baghdad for an upbeat assessment of the situation there, the U.S. Embassy in Iraq painted a starkly different portrait of increasing danger and hardship faced by its Iraqi...

Not long after I started the Duck of Minerva I began a series called "Wednesday's Maxim". Like a number of my series, I let it fall by the wayside. Witness the revival of "Wednesday's maxim," but on Friday!Considering its origin carefully, all political power is rooted in violence. There is no legitimate power, except that of republics within their own territories but not beyond. Not even the power of the emperor is an exception, for it is...

A couple of weeks ago the Cunning Realist wrote:This has probably been discussed at great length elsewhere, and undoubtedly will strike some as a dumb question. But before tonight was anyone besides me unaware that U.S. citizenship is not a requirement for military service?Which reminded me of a very painful academic smackdown in Tarak Barkawi's Globalization and War:Thompson... argues that over the course of the late eighteenth and nineteenth...

President Bush made a surprise visit to Baghdad today.For several days, the Administration had been promoting a "major" cabinet meeting to "hone" its post-Zarqawi Iraq strategy. Up at Camp David, Bush had all of his Cabinet and senior advisors either in attendence or hooked in via teleconference.Well, lo and behold, on day 2, instead of having a teleconfrence with the new PM of the Iraqi Government, he drops into Baghdad (litterally, drops from...

As the Czech Republic leads the United States 2-0 at the half in the first World Cup match for both teams, it occurs to me how odd it is to be able to watch the game live on ESPN2 (which I am in fact doing at the moment). Last World Cup, it was much harder to get live coverage, even of the US team's matches, to say nothing of the matches of other and better teams. I was able to catch a fair bit of the tournament since I was in Germany for half...

A mutual friend sent my wife an email about EssayFraud.org. The site claims to protect students against "fraudulent" mail-order foreign-operated academic paper services. These scam artists, claim the staff at essayfraud.org, will either steal unsuspecting students' money or send them papers "riddled with grammatical errors and spelling mistakes." They note that:Foreign sites like [omitted] hire poor, ESL writers in Pakistan for as little as...

Victor Davis Hanson reviews Cobra II. Some of the highlights: Gordon and Trainor do not even inquire whether the ties between al Qaeda and Saddam’s intelligence agencies, which had prompted formal condemnation from both the Clinton administration and the Senate, might not have been a worthy casus belli in a post-September 11 world.Put "after the fold" in hereNor do Gordon and Trainor credit the still more telling fact that, following the...

Many prominent bloggers on the left side of the blogosphere are meeting this weekend in Las Vegas for the first annual "YearlyKos" convention. There are certainly multiple panels that sound interesting, though I have no idea how meaningful this convention will prove to be. From a social science point of view, it clearly seems like a political blog-related event worth watching.A few hours ago, for example, the convention featured a panel on the...

To say this event is dominating discussion in the MSM and blogosphere would be an understatement. So I'll do my part to pass along some things worth reading:David Ignatius on the potential breathing room afforded by Zarqawi's demise.Defense Tech on the weapons systems and techniques that took Zarqawi out and what it indicates about the mini-evolution of airpower.King Daddy in many ways echoes the senitments here at the Duck.Mohammad-Mahmoud...

My colleague Dan Byman explains why Zarqawi's death probably won't make things better, and may even make them worse (via Robin Varghese of 3 Quarks Daily):Still, the history of killing terrorist and insurgent leaders suggests that we must be cautious before declaring the death of any leader to be decisive. In 1992, Israel killed Abbas al-Musawi, the secretary-general of the Lebanese Hezbollah, to much self-congratulation. Although Musawi was a...