How Not to Withdraw From Iraq
Iraq? Where’s that? Most Americans no longer seem to know and evidently could care less, but don’t tell that to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, various key military figures and Washington officials, or some of the neocons, warrior-pundits, and liberal war-fighters...
Welcome to Post-Legal America
Is the Libyan war legal? Was bin Laden’s killing legal? Is it legal for the president of the United States to target an American citizen for assassination? Were those "enhanced interrogation techniques" legal? These are all questions raised in recent weeks. Each seems...
Israel and the Palestinians Through the Looking Glass
It's been like dueling banjos in Washington this week. President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu each got to say the same thing at length and at least twice. Last Thursday, the president gave his "Arab Spring" speech in which -- after...
Pakistan Playing the China Card
In the wake of the killing of Osama bin Laden, outrage against Pakistan has become commonplace in Washington, as exasperation grows, pressure builds, and the threats multiply. Members of Congress from both parties have urged major cuts in the third largest U.S....
Bored to Death in Afghanistan (and Washington)
One day in October 2001, a pilot for Northwest Airlines refused to let Arshad Chowdhury, a 25-year-old American Muslim (“with a dark complexion”) who had once worked as an investment banker in the World Trade Center, board his plane at San Francisco National Airport....
Obama and the Mideast Arms Trade
Say it ain’t so, Osama! His take-down was the story that grabbed almost 69 percent of the American “news hole” the week it happened, and from a media point of view it turns out to be the gift that never stops giving. Small wonder, since it’s got just about everything:...
Warrior Pundits and War Pornographers
As Department of Defense officials prepared for an invasion of Iraq in early 2003, they were intent on giving good war at home and abroad all at once—and on creating images that, like the coming Pax Americana in the Middle East, would be forever. They planned, as they...
A New Age of ‘Enlightened’ War
In case you hadn’t noticed, they are—no kidding around—absolutely the niftiest non-humans on Earth. I’m speaking about the special-operations force of Navy SEALs that took out Osama bin Laden. They and their special ops colleagues are “supermen” (ABC News), “X-men”...
