Nearly a week after the abrupt demise of Washington's top commander in Afghanistan, U.S. strategy for reversing the flood of bad news that has been recently pouring out of that strife-torn country remains as unclear as ever. Led by Sen. John McCain and many of the...
Now we know why “King David” Petraeus fainted like a girl at his Senate testimony [.pdf] two weeks ago. Armed Services Committee chairman Carl Levin put Petraeus on the ropes by asking if his allegiance to President Obama's withdrawal timeline for Afghanistan...
Much of the time, our wars may hardly exist for us, but in the age of celebrity, our generals do – exactly because they become celebrities. When Barack Obama picked Stanley McChrystal as his Afghan war commander, the general was greeted by the media as little short of...
Statement on H. Res. 1422, made June 24, 2010. Madam Speaker, the House of Representatives recently considered H. Res. 1422, honoring the 140th anniversary of the Department of Justice. I voted against this resolution because of the Justice Department's history of...
Everyone is shocked – shocked! – that the indiscretions of Gen. Stanley McChrystal failed to provoke a general reevaluation of our course in Afghanistan, rather than merely a review of who's in charge of it. I find this shocking. After all, as I recall, Obama ran on...
In the aftermath of 9/11, the Bush administration raised the specter of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) – nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons – as the gravest threat to America. In his “axis of evil” State of the Union Address in January 2002, President Bush...
In contrast to World War II and Desert Storm – which had clear goals, even though those of the latter were limited – the war in Afghanistan resembles the Spanish-American War and the Vietnam War. In the former, the goal changed from defeating the Spanish in a...
All Washington is atwitter over a Rolling Stone profile of Gen. Stanley McChrystal in which the thuggish commander of US forces in Afghanistan and his snarky juvenile-sounding aides (who call themselves “Team America”) deride Vice President Joe Biden – “Joe Bite Me” –...
A year and a half into the presidency of Barack Obama, any hopes that he would usher in a dramatic rethinking of U.S. foreign policy have been more or less definitively dashed. Notwithstanding the wild-eyed warnings of right-wing hawks who see Obama as "the first...
As the ecology in the Gulf circles the sticky tar drain of evolution, and countless livelihoods spanning at least four states going down with it, Americans are wondering where their Superman is. The disappointment that President Barack Obama seems stuck in the phone...
