Because President Barack Obama’s attempt to entice Iran to give up its nuclear program has ended in unsurprising failure, he is now trying to ratchet up the pressure on the regime by leading the drive to increase international economic sanctions. However, even if he were to succeed in getting Russia and China to go along …
Continue reading “More Sanctions Against Iran Are Not the Answer”
Although the Clinton administration’s debacle in Somalia in the early 1990s is most famous – as depicted in the Hollywood blockbuster Black Hawk Down – more recent American meddling by the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations may have worse long-term effects. Even though George H.W. Bush’s and Clinton’s original intentions of protecting international …
Continue reading “Making Unneeded Enemies in Somalia”
President Obama has been so chastened by his failure to meet the pledge of closing Guantánamo prison within a year that Rahm Emanuel, his chief of staff, is trying to negotiate with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to gain Republican support for doing so. In exchange, Graham wants Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other alleged 9/11 attackers …
Continue reading “On Guantánamo, Symbolism Trumps Substance”
President Barack Obama has committed to a world without nuclear weapons. Although deep cuts in the massive atomic stockpiles of the United States and Russia – with a combined total of 20,000 warheads – are possible and desirable, committing to eliminating nuclear weapons from the planet is good rhetoric but may actually be harmful to …
Continue reading “Will Eliminating Nuclear Weapons Make Peace More Likely?”
The United States military is attempting to transfer its recipe for "success" in the conflict in Iraq to the war in Afghanistan. In Iraq, after many years of stumbling to relearn the lessons of counterinsurgency warfare gleaned from many years of staggering in Vietnam, the United States happened upon a technique that attenuated the Sunni …
Continue reading “Learning From History: Can the US Win the Afghan War?”
The arrest of the 10-member church group trying to "rescue" 33 Haitian children from the aftermath of the earthquake by smuggling them across the border to the Dominican Republic has wider implications for U.S. foreign policy. The group’s besmirching of the substantial and laudable American humanitarian effort in Haiti is regrettable. But the arrogance of …
Continue reading “American Arrogance Overseas Should End”
Dozens of people have been arrested under the Stolen Valor Act, which punishes, by up to a year in jail, the wearing of any unearned military medal. It is still a crime even if no effort was made to profit from the adornment or dissembling about earning it. This law is now being challenged in …
Continue reading “Liberty Versus ‘Patriotism’”
President Obama has presented Congress with a spending request of $3.8 trillion for the next fiscal year in 2011, but with a third of it not paid for with taxes, thus resulting in a $1.3 trillion deficit (a whopping 8.3 percent of GDP). The small piece of good news is that this deficit is smaller …
Continue reading “The US Can No Longer Afford Its Empire”
The results of the special election for the Massachusetts Senate seat once held by Ted Kennedy reverberated like a "shot heard ’round the world" – or at least one heard ’round Washington. All the spending lately in Washington has apparently alienated the political independents that Barack Obama won in November 2008. And the president gets …
Continue reading “Why Freeze Spending on Only Part of the Budget?”
Keep an eye on Iraq, advises Ivan Eland
