The idea that the United States must exercise "global leadership" is rationalized by our interventionists as a necessary prerequisite for maintaining some type of "world order." Who will guard the sea lanes? Who will deter "aggression"?...
Senator Rand Paul is everywhere: campaigning for Republican candidates during the crucial midterm elections, on Fox News explaining to Hannity why going into Iraq with ground troops is a mistake, teaming up with Cory Booker to call for reform of federal sentencing...
I underwent surgery on Wednesday, and will be needing some recovery time. I'm not sure how much time I'll need at this point, so suffice to say here that there will be no Friday column, and perhaps no Monday column either. I very much regret missing two whole columns...
Amid all the hysteria surrounding the rise of the Islamic State in the Levant (ISIS), even the most frantic have usually refrained from calling for "boots on the ground," i.e. the re-invasion of Iraq. Except for John McCain, at most they say we need to arm...
Every time they find a mass grave, they think it’s the one they’re looking for – but it isn’t. No, this isn’t a Halloween tale: it’s a real life story about 43 missing Mexican students who once attended the Escuela Normal Rural Isidro Burgos, a small teachers' college...
Nobody likes a know-it-all. You know the type I mean: somebody who sits there with a smug-as-all-hell look on his/her face while pontificating on a subject with absolute certainty, secure in the knowledge that they’re echoing the Conventional Wisdom. Yes, they could...
Want proof of the craziness of US foreign and military policy? Just turn to Leon Panetta’s Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace, wherein the former Secretary of Defense and longtime Democratic party hack congressman recounted a 2010 conversation with...
The U.S. government is good at doing what it’s not supposed to be doing – invading other countries without provocation, utilizing "soft power" in order to pull off regime change, enriching politically favored economic interests under the guise of promoting...
Glenn Greenwald has a fascinating piece in The Intercept making the case that the "war on terrorism" is going to be "endless," as he puts it. From a decade to twenty years to Leon Panetta’s recent pronouncement that "I think we’re looking at...
They call it the Hermit Kingdom: ruled over by a dynasty of ostensibly communist despots who have established the world’s only Marxist monarchy, North Korea is a mystery wrapped inside an anomaly. News of the inner workings of the regime is sporadic, unreliable, and...
