The War on the Word ‘War’
Nobody seems to have noticed, but in the nearly two and a half years of the Obama administration at least three commonplace phrases of the George W. Bush era have slipped into oblivion: “regime change,” “shock and awe,” and “imperial presidency.” The war in Libya...
How to End the War on Terror
Every time we get a peek inside Washington’s war on terror, it just couldn’t be uglier. Last week, three little home-grown nightmares from that “war” caught my attention. One you could hardly miss. On the front page of the New York Times, Glenn Carle, a former CIA...
American Militarism Is Not a Fairy Tale
President Obama recently reshuffled his top Washington warriors, sending CIA Director Leon Panetta, a man who knows Congress well, on to the Pentagon to replace retiring Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. In turn, the president is bringing in Gen. David Petraeus,...
100% Scared
How Not to Withdraw From Iraq
Iraq? Where’s that? Most Americans no longer seem to know and evidently could care less, but don’t tell that to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, various key military figures and Washington officials, or some of the neocons, warrior-pundits, and liberal war-fighters...
Welcome to Post-Legal America
Is the Libyan war legal? Was bin Laden’s killing legal? Is it legal for the president of the United States to target an American citizen for assassination? Were those "enhanced interrogation techniques" legal? These are all questions raised in recent weeks. Each seems...
Israel and the Palestinians Through the Looking Glass
It's been like dueling banjos in Washington this week. President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu each got to say the same thing at length and at least twice. Last Thursday, the president gave his "Arab Spring" speech in which -- after...
Pakistan Playing the China Card
In the wake of the killing of Osama bin Laden, outrage against Pakistan has become commonplace in Washington, as exasperation grows, pressure builds, and the threats multiply. Members of Congress from both parties have urged major cuts in the third largest U.S....
Bored to Death in Afghanistan (and Washington)
One day in October 2001, a pilot for Northwest Airlines refused to let Arshad Chowdhury, a 25-year-old American Muslim (“with a dark complexion”) who had once worked as an investment banker in the World Trade Center, board his plane at San Francisco National Airport....
