I've pulled my post entitled "Tim Burke Wows Me." I want to write a more substantive reflection - and call for discussion - on what, if anything, the online debate about Theory's Empire tells us about "post-prefixed" approaches to IR, and that post will get in the way. Apologies to people with an RSS feed.

Robert Farley doesn't think much of Wretchard's (of the Belmont Club) take on the Battle of Guadalcanal. Here's what Rob has to say:So much is wrong with this; Wolcott does an effective job of demolishing the hyper-masculinity of Wretchard's argument. Let's be frank, if Al Qaeda were given the option of fighting Americans by Marquess of Queensbury rules on an open field in the middle of Afghanistan, they'd leap at it. Winning a war, in spite of what the boys at Belmont think, is not about having a larger set of balls.I agree that there's something a bit unseemly about treating...

A number of weblogs have linked to Elliot Cohen's Sunday Op-Ed in the Washington Post, "A Hawk Questions Himself." Cohen defends the basic rationale for the war, but slams the administration for its poor implementation of the Iraq occupation. Key quotation:But a pundit should not recommend a policy without adequate regard for the ability of those in charge to execute it, and here I stumbled. I could not imagine, for example, that the civilian and military high command would treat "Phase IV" -- the post-combat period that has killed far more Americans than the "real" war -- as of secondary...

Over the past decade, I've written a couple of book chapters about the use of the internet by transnational political activists. Environment, human rights, and peace organizations, for example, utilize the internet to communicate instantly with thousands of like-minded people around the world. Technology helps overcome resource mobilization costs for social movements.This use of the web generally helps progressive organizations promote their causes, typically in the face of well-funded corporate and national political opponents.Of course, the technology has a dark side as well -- and this...

As I've discussed before, the current incarnation of "al-Qaeda" appears - at least based upon public documents - to be more of a diverse movement than a single organization. Indeed, "al-Qaeda" is, in some respects, linked together by the claims of particular groups to represent "al-Qaeda" and by the tendency of many western governments, pundits, and ordinary individuals to label any militant Islamicist terrorist attack as an act of "al-Qaeda." The latter groups' rhetoric may serve the interests of those who want to represent the War on Terror as a "classic" sort of war against a coherent...

Writing in Slate, William Saletan argues that Al-Queda's strategy is to "destroy democracy from within."Bin Laden's whole game plan is to turn the people of the democratic world against their governments. He thinks democracies are weak because their people, who are more easily frightened than their governments, can bring those governments down.As Saletan puts it earlier in the article:In April 2004, Bin Laden told Europeans, "Vigilant people do not allow their politicians to tamper with their security" by pursuing policies that provoke al-Qaida attacks. "Injustice is inflicted on us and on...

Can someone give me a good reason why Michael Totten's latest essay is any better than his first published piece? Because, for the life of me, I can't understand what the point of the thing is.Totten argues that Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon is a good precedent for a future US withdrawal from Iraq. The reason? It undermined Hezbollah and has led to a general improvement in Israel's strategic position in Lebanon. Putting aside whether that is true, I simply don't understand how:1. Anyone can claim that the cases are remotely comparable;2. Anyone can write an entire article on the putative...

Like Rodger, I've been reluctant to write anything substantive about the London bombings until we have better information about precisely what happened, and who was involved. Nevertheless, I think some conditional comments are probably in order.For those of you who haven't seen it, John Ikenberry posted a terrific email from Mick Cox - a senior international-relations scholar at the London School of Economics – about the bombings.Rodger's own post on what the London bombings say about the flypaper rationale for the Iraq War is consistent with what a lot of other bloggers are saying,...