Gauging U.S. military policy — at least on a meta level — isn’t as hard as it looks, as long as you remember a few general axioms: like, what seems to be true today, will almost certainly change tomorrow, and never, ever listen to a four-star commander when he says...
As far as villains go, Pfc. Bradley Manning is hardly quintessential. At 5 foot 2 inches tall, his slender frame and bespectacled image has invoked snickers, sarcasm and according to reporting over the last two years, a lifetime of bullying. That bullying reached an...
Never underestimate the power of a fantabulous writing team. That’s just what I did when I suggested, however gently, that the new shows Person of Interest (CBS) and Homeland (Showtime) might tank for all of their overdone, paranoid schlock. This is what I wrote last...
It was in the middle of a breaking news story and MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell sounded like she was going to cry. It had to do with CIA Director David Petraeus. She was ticking off his accomplishments one by one, the words “personal tragedy” ringing forebodingly like...
For the better part of two years the campaign saga has pounded the surf of our daily lives like a relentless black tide. Now, in a matter of hours, polling places at last will close, with either President Barack Obama or Mitt Romney emerging victorious at the other...
On Halloween, an army of the undead will be unleashed upon Mission Bay off the coast of San Diego. U.S. soldiers, Marines, special forces, police and emergency responders will face the challenge of a lifetime as the flesh-eating scourge threatens to devour their ranks...
The much awaited foreign policy debate Monday night probably did nothing to create a clear contrast between President Barack Obama and his challenger Mitt Romney. It did, however, confirm that neither candidate offers much of a foreign policy vision moving into the...
Army Gen. Carter F. Ham, head of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), stood at a podium in Algeria and addressed the deteriorating security conditions in the neighboring country of Mali. (For those geographically-challenged, remember when you were a kid and people used...
Romney is fond of invoking Ronald Reagan and Harry Truman — and now George Marshall — as though their 20th century foreign policy legacies could lend his own cobbled-together worldview some indomitable burnish. But he seems loath to even utter the name of the American...
WASHINGTON — There are learning curves and then there are learning curves, and there seems to be no greater disadvantage than the one the American media is suffering from when it comes to Iran. Me included. Fancy that. Engaging Iran, with which we have had this...
