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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
