A Dream Dies, but the Beat Goes On

I am still trying to recover from the Republican Party’s overwhelming failure to understand that only Ron Paul was speaking good sense about the dismal state of U.S. foreign policy. Depending on whom you listen to, however, one might almost think in spite of all...

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It’s All About Israel

Editorial note: This is the second part of a three-part article. Part I is here. Part III will appear on Friday. It was and is a matter of high principle for the neoconservatives that the US unconditionally support Israel in its struggle against the Arab world....

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Overwrought Empire

Americans lived in a “victory culture” for much of the twentieth century. You could say that we experienced an almost 75-year stretch of triumphalism — think of it as the real “American Century” — from World War I to the end of the Cold War, with time off for a...

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Ignore Syrian Rebels’ Threats

Syrian rebels, in a stalemated conflict with the autocratic Bashar al-Assad, predictably are trying every trick to suck more help out of the United States. They are using the same tactic that developing nations used against U.S. policymakers during the Cold War to get...

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How the US Quietly Lost the IED War in Afghanistan

Although the surge of “insider attacks” on U.S.-NATO forces has dominated coverage of the war in Afghanistan in 2012, an even more important story has been quietly unfolding: the U.S. loss of the pivotal war of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to the Taliban. Some...

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Romney’s Pretty Little War Speech

Romney is fond of invoking Ronald Reagan and Harry Truman — and now George Marshall — as though their 20th century foreign policy legacies could lend his own cobbled-together worldview some indomitable burnish. But he seems loath to even utter the name of the American...

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Shadow Fighting Erupts Over Gadhafi

CAIRO — Civilians in the town of Bani Walid, 170 km southeast of Tripoli, are facing a humanitarian crisis as Libyan security forces lay siege to the stronghold of Moammar Gadhafi supporters, cutting off water, food, and medical supplies. Local doctors told Amnesty...

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