Numerous updates below the fold.The AP quotes Bush's address on the foiled airline bombing plot:"This nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation," President Bush declared.Anyone who reads blogs or listens to right-wing talk programs knows that "Islamic Fascists"--and its clumsy neologistic spinoff, "Islamofascists"--has long been a staple of right-wing rhetoric. While Bush has made numerous comparisons between militant Islamicists and fascists, I couldn't remember him actually using the phrase "Islamic Fascists"...

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 Weisberg DOES find acceptable. It's not as if one cannot assert that invading Iraq was a mistake, because Weisberg himself does so in this column. To base...

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 frames for methods of research: "scientific" style positivism, interpretivism, and relational "constructionism"No less an authority than Stephen Colbert...

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 gains legitimacy through claims to be fighting on behalf of the Palestinian cause. Thee continued linkage of the two conflicts helps undermine support...

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 Sixteenth-Century France," Studies in the Renaissance, Vol. 13 (1966), p. 250.This is from an article I just happen to be reading at the moment. Much better examples...

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 Israeli occupation. It started in 1929 when the grand mufti of Jerusalem ordered a terrorist attack against Jewish residents of Hebron, whose families had...

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 very insightful for understanding issues in the present day.A central theme of Galula's doctrine of counterinsurgency is that the more powerful...