The pratfall Dave Petraeus took face-first into his microphone during his farcical testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee last Tuesday channeled the Twix candy bar commercial that asks: “Need a moment?” As the New York Times put it, the Teflon General was facing some intense questioning on the president’s order to begin reducing American …
Continue reading “Heard Any Good War Jokes Lately?”
The timing of the publication of a major New York Times story on the vast untapped mineral wealth that lies beneath Afghanistan’s soil is raising major questions about the intent of the Pentagon, which released the information.Given the increasingly negative news that has come out of Afghanistan – and of U.S. strategy there – some …
Continue reading “Timing of Afghan Mineral Story Wealth Evokes Skepticism”
As Renaissance political scientist Niccolo Machiavelli noted, the fall of Rome came about when its military elite, known as the Praetorian Guard, gained control over the emperor and the Senate. Had irony survived the Bush Jr. administration, it would relish that America’s empire is crumbling under the undue influence of its military elite, the United …
Continue reading “King David and His Howling Commandos”
While I was taking a week off to celebrate Memorial Day the story broke about “King David” Petraeus secretly giving himself authority in back in September 2009 to start a war anywhere from the Horn of Africa to the Bananastans*. His secret directive allows him to bury America in another quagmire any time his black …
Continue reading “King David Rules”
The tea leaves tell me we’re about to experience a seismic event that will produce the next collapse of our five-sided House of Usher, the Pentagon. The last time we saw a temblor of that magnitude was in November 2006. Just before the mid-term election, young Mr. Bush assured us that then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld …
Continue reading “The Five-Sided House of Usher”
Vlahos: beware the general with political ambitions
The short version of an old joke about U.S. defense spending goes like this: An overweight nuclear submarine skipper baffles the congressional defense appropriations subcommittees with a line of technical gobbledygook Einstein wouldn’t understand, and the subcommittees give the Navy whatever it wants. A short, bald fighter pilot feeds the subcommittees a ration of dwarfed …
Continue reading “COIN of the Realm”
"Jewish Settlers Live High While GIs Die" is what Gen. David Petraeus is saying if we strip away the niceties. Is Petraeus’ formulation anti-Semitic? Perhaps it would be better to talk of "Israeli settlers." But that portrayal is not accurate. The minority of Arab citizens of Israel, even though suffering so many forms of discrimination, …
Continue reading “Petraeus’ Cry”
Considering the Obama administration’s ever wobblier attempt to impose "crippling sanctions" on Iran, the New York Times‘ David Sanger recently wrote, "The delays and the potential for a substantially watered-down resolution, Mr. Obama’s allies say, have put the administration’s credibility on the line in one of its biggest foreign policy challenges." Credibility. Washington policymakers have …
Continue reading “Truth and Consequences in the Middle East”
It is already a commonplace to say that people who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat their mistakes. Some 1,942 years ago, the Jews in the province called Palaestina launched a revolt against the Roman Empire. In retrospect, this looks like an act of madness. Palestine was a small and insignificant part of …
Continue reading “The Doomsday Weapon” 
