In 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm II, whom history has underrated, told his Chief of the General Staff, von Moltke the Less, that he wanted to remain on the defensive in the West and take the offensive in the East, against Russia. Such a reversal of the Schlieffen Plan would...
Last month the Bush administration announced plans to deepen U.S. involvement in Colombia by doubling the number of U.S. troops and private military contractors stationed there. The move came in the midst of an energetic public-relations campaign by the U.S. State...
The photographs of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers have had a major impact on public opinion in the United States, according to back-to-back national polls that also show continued erosion in support for President George W. Bush and the war in Iraq. A...
What struck me most about Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's testimony last week was how he reserved his greatest indignation for those who leaked classified information exposing rampant military abuse of Iraqi prisoners. They did so "against the law," he twice noted...
The proponents of the Annan Plan for Cyprus have expressed great regret at the rejection of the plan by Cyprus's Greek southern section in a general referendum. But really, the plan's main supporters got exactly what they wanted- and even if they hadn't, they would...
In a 1972 book, Victims of Groupthink: A Psychology Study of Foreign-Policy Decisions and Fiascoes, Irving Janis identified the Vietnam War and the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba as particularly compelling examples of how very smart people can collectively make very...
THE SETTING Toby Dodge's Inventing Iraq: The Failure of Nation Building and a History Denied 1 (03) constitutes a very interesting guide to the British period in Iraq - or Mesopotamia, as it was then called. The period began, naturally enough, in World War I. Like...
As the United Nations prepares to organize elections and help create a new interim government in Iraq starting in July, skepticism is growing about the wisdom of risking UN lives in a country swirling in violence and chaos.. The UN mission in Iraq is bound to fail,...
The blithering, the blathering, the pontification, and the grandstanding – that about describes the Senate Armed Services Committee hearings on the Abu Ghraib filth-fest. The Democrats were so hot to link Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld directly to the...
The star witness before yesterday's Senate Armed Services Committee hearing was Army Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba. Taguba carried out an investigation on the activities of the Army's 800th Military Police Brigade at Abu Ghraib prison. Afterward, he wrote a 6,000 page...
