I'm not quite sure why I am not red-faced with anger at the fact that President Obama has set such a long tentative timetable for removing U.S. troops from Iraq. It's to be 19 months before all "combat" troops are out, and after that 35,000-50,000 will be left,...
Drug War Tragedy in Mexico
Perhaps it has taken warnings to U.S. college students considering where to undertake the traditional undergraduate (and beyond) practices of drinking too much and looking for sex in a warm climate during spring break to bring the situation home to Americans. Various...
Empire at the End of Its Rope
It is difficult to avoid the perception, as the U.S. (and world) economy continues to melt down, that our political leaders are suffering something resembling a mass delusion or even a group psychosis. One may hope that the insertion of 17,000 more U.S. troops into...
The War Recession
For the sake of all the people who have either lost their jobs, seen their mortgages turned upside-down, or at least been plunged into anxiety, one certainly hopes that the $790 billion "stimulus" package, the most expensive piece of legislation ever passed,...
Iraqis Back in Charge?
The votes are not officially tabulated yet, and it will take a while for the implications [.pdf] of the recent provincial elections in Iraq to become apparent. But it is not too early to take note that they were conducted almost entirely by the Iraqis themselves,...
Quit Digging in Afghanistan
The closest thing to good news about the future of U.S. engagement in Afghanistan is that while the Obama administration is committed to sending as many as 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan, several news stories have suggested that the purpose of doing so is to...
Sadism, Not Substance,
Behind Torture Advocacy
It is hard for me to imagine the staffs of National Review, the Weekly Standard, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page actually, personally, physically torturing somebody, though a few might overcome their inherent wussiness and be able to do it. Whether they...
The More Things Change…
Well, it looks as if we will soon have a president who is able to string sentences together in a reasonably coherent fashion, if sometimes a little slowly and with lots of pauses. At least Barack Obama, whether it's true or not, will give the impression that the...
Was Panetta Picked in a Panic?
The gang over at The New Republic has been scrambling to develop and publicize a case that the choice of former Clinton White House chief of staff (and before that OMB director and eight-term congressman from northern California) Leon Panetta to head the CIA was...
The Empire Shrugs
My early reaction to the Israeli ground invasion of the Gaza Strip is perhaps more U.S.-centered than some others'. But the most significant aspect of the U.S. response, implicitly acknowledged in most news reports and commentary, is precisely that nobody really...