This is it for me, at least for this chapter. I am off to join some people who don’t much appreciate voices singing out of key, and while they might be able to get over my public disdain for coaches who punt in opposing territory, it would be rather awkward to continue to point out [...]
Archive for the ‘War on Terror’ Category
The End of the Internet
Posted in Corruption, Education, Energy Policy, Health Care, Housing Crisis, Housing Policy, Industrial Policy, Inspirational, Labor Policy, Meltdown, Middle East, Miscellaneous, NAFTA, Obama, War on Terror on December 15, 2009 | 29 Comments »
The Wrong Way, Slowly
Posted in Middle East, Military, Obama, South Asia, War on Terror on December 7, 2009 | 7 Comments »
For the first seventeen years of the Peloponnesian War, Athens and Sparta fought to something of a draw. Sparta dominated the land, but could not breach Athens’ walls. Athens dominated the sea, but could not march inland with enough force to defeat Sparta.
Change for the Sake of Change
Posted in Industrial Policy, Labor Policy, Middle East, Obama, South Asia, War on Terror, Weapons of Mass Destruction on December 2, 2009 | 3 Comments »
Still trying to process all of my objections to the current Afghan strategy into something moderately coherent, so I’ll start with a very different story: Fritz Henderson was rather suddenly and unceremoniously dismissed as CEO of GM. General Motors Co. Chief Executive Officer Fritz Henderson resigned after eight months on the job as directors concluded [...]
Control of the Stakes
Posted in Obama, Rudy Giuliani, War on Terror on November 16, 2009 | 7 Comments »
I am a huge fan of going for it on fourth down. The odds are typically on your side, and the main reason coaches don’t do it is that failure is so much more evident than success. Well, here goes the second-guessing: All sorts of things went wrong to get the Pats to this position [...]
Rock and a Hard Place
Posted in China, Foreigners, Middle East, Military, Russia, War on Terror, Weapons of Mass Destruction on September 29, 2009 | 4 Comments »
Even as we wobble towards a coherent Afghanistan policy, Iran continues to be a massive thorn in our side. What do we do when all of our options are terrible?
Perspective
Posted in Dick Cheney, Foreigners, George W. Bush, Military, Obama, War on Terror on September 14, 2009 | 10 Comments »
Undeterred by his own attorney general and common sense, Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon intends to prosecute Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo, Douglas Feith, William Haynes, Jay Bybee, and David Addington (collectively, the “Bush Six”) for their role in providing the legal framework for Guantanamo: On Saturday, however, Público reported that Judge Garzón had accepted a lawsuit [...]
Reform Week: Foreign Policy
Posted in Dick Cheney, Foreigners, George W. Bush, Middle East, Military, Obama, South Asia, War on Terror, Weapons of Mass Destruction on September 11, 2009 | 7 Comments »
Eight years.
Uncomfortable
Posted in Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Obama, War on Terror, Weapons of Mass Destruction on September 2, 2009 | 25 Comments »
I hate Dick Cheney. I cannot imagine a more disgusting combination of power and venality in American politics. We have more than our share of scum over the years, but whether by luck or by horse sense we have managed to keep the worst of them out of high office. Sarah Palin lost. Ronald Reagan [...]
Lunch in Pyongyang
Posted in Foreign Policy, Foreigners, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Military, North Korea, Obama, War on Terror, Weapons of Mass Destruction on August 7, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Two American journalists working for Current TV demonstrated a rather poor sense of geography and got themselves captured on the south side of the Yalu River. For their trouble, they won a 140-day trip through the North Korean penal system, a journey that only ended when Bill Clinton went to Pyongyang and got them out. [...]
Declaring Victory
Posted in John McCain, Military, Obama, War on Terror, Weapons of Mass Destruction on July 31, 2009 | 4 Comments »
The conventional wisdom seems to be that Vietnam was a bad war because we lost. Pity, because the tragedy is that there was nothing there to win. It is a distinction that I fear has been lost among our political leadership on both sides of the aisle. It’s easy to imagine war as capture the [...]
