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Whenever I try to chart a course between the “Iraq would have been great if we’d just had smarter people in charge of the occupation” and the “Arabs can’t handle democracy” school of thought, I tend to come back to things like this — the great difficult [sic] Belgians have in creating a viable, legitimate binational […]
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Filed under: politics, foreign policy
A few months ago, it was the received wisdom that Iraq was in the midst of a rapidly escalating civil war. That claim is no longer plausible. ~Michael Gerson
Well, actually, that was the “received wisdom” of many people last summer as well. Rather than “rapidly escalating” now, the civil war has reached a plateau for the […]
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Filed under: politics, foreign policy
Fukuyama actually makes some sense about Russia:
What the West needs to do is watch Russia’s actual behavior, and not project onto it the West’s own hopes and fears as occurred over the past fifteen years. Many Westerners are angry with Putin and the Russia he is creating in part because they are jilted lovers: they […]
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Filed under: politics, foreign policy
John Warner’s recent relatively outspoken stances on Iraq are evidently not the result of worries about his chances for re-election next year, as he has announced that he will not be running. As John Judis has noted, Virginia is a vulnerable seat for the GOP with a Warner retirement, and it is also a state that […]
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Filed under: politics
And the fact is that the neocon crowd that took far too easily the helm of the foreign policy establishment away from the realist and liberal internationalist players in this game are almost entirely responsible for the dramatic erosion of America’s national security portfolio. ~Steve Clemons
Well, with the exception of rare figures such as Mr. Clemons […]
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Filed under: politics, foreign policy
Strange but true: the Stars and Bars adorn this Pakistani fruit-seller’s stand (via Cliopatria). What’s Urdu for Deo Vindice?
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Filed under: miscellaneous
The Wall Street Journal (yes, you read that correctly) has a story on Ron Paul’s presidential campaign, and it is surprisingly favourable.
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Filed under: politics
As someone who was a fairly early critic of Maliki, I have to say that I have never had any confidence in his government as an effective U.S. ally, much less as a reliable quisling government. Even so, I have to acknowledge that Maliki was never going to achieve the things that Washington expected him to achieve, […]
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Filed under: politics, foreign policy
The antiwar forces, the surge opponents, the “I was against it from the beginning” people are, some of them, indulging in grim, and mindless, triumphalism. They show a smirk of pleasure at bad news that has been brought by the other team. Some have a terrible quaking fear that something good might happen in Iraq, […]
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Filed under: politics, foreign policy
Rumours continue to swirl about an attack on Iran before the year is out. Prof. Cole points to this Barnett Rubin item, this author was told by U.S. intelligence sources that his forthcoming book on Iran might be made obsolete by an attack before 2008, and there has been talk that Rove timed his departure to […]
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Filed under: politics, foreign policy
So far Mr Thompson’s speeches have been a succession of conservative clichés interspersed with long pauses. ~The Economist
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Filed under: politics
For diplomacy to work, we need to dial up [bold mine-DL] our political and economic pressure - not just our tough talk. ~Barack Obama
How do “we” dial up economic pressure beyond the current sanctions regime? Turn the dial to eleven? The old Clinton-era caviar export exceptions are, as far as I know, a thing of the […]
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Filed under: politics, foreign policy
The draft provides a stark assessment of the tactical effects of the current U.S.-led counteroffensive to secure Baghdad. “While the Baghdad security plan was intended to reduce sectarian violence, U.S. agencies differ on whether such violence has been reduced,” it states. While there have been fewer attacks against U.S. forces, it notes, the number of […]
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Filed under: politics, foreign policy
From President Bush on down, U.S. officials enthused about Iraqi democracy while pursuing a course of action that made it virtually certain that Iran and its proxies would emerge as the dominant political force. ~David Ignatius
Of course, Iran’s main proxy, SCIRI, was always going to be part of “the dominant political force” once that group was allowed […]
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Filed under: politics, foreign policy
It’s hard to imagine Jacques Chirac, Mr. Sarkozy’s predecessor, speaking this way. (Mr. Sarkozy has also reportedly described French diplomats as “cowards” and proposed “[getting] rid of the Quai d’Orsay.” Imagine the media uproar if President Bush mused about doing the same to Foggy Bottom?) ~The Wall Street Journal
Does anyone outside of the lunatic asylum […]
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Filed under: politics, foreign policy
Ross offers an interesting counterargument on the crucial ”Bourne question”:
Okay, but let’s not take this too far. For instance, I would submit that a film like Braveheart (which, like the Bourne movies, I’m very fond of) qualifies as obviously “anti-English” even though it’s technically only critical of the English government and military, or that the infamous Valley […]
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Filed under: politics, film
The sound you hear is the last shred of Rick Santorum’s credibility bursting into flames.
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Filed under: politics
Take two from the world-famous Miss Teen South Carolina:
Personally, my friends and I, we know exactly where the United States is on our map. We don’t know anyone else who doesn’t, and if the statistics are correct, I believe there should be more emphasis on geography and our education, so people will learn to read […]
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Filed under: miscellaneous
To ask the all-important question, “Is The Bourne Ultimatum anti-American” is a bit like asking, “Is Gladiator anti-Roman?” Put this way, I think we can immediately see how misguided the question is, since the question makes us say whether the movie is for or against an entire country, way of life or (if you will) civilisation, […]
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Filed under: politics, film
Before I go this morning, I wanted to mention that Fisk has an excellent article on the Armenian genocide.
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Filed under: history, Armenia
Well, I had warned you that this day was coming. I had thought that my intensive Arabic class would interrupt blogging, but I managed to keep posting anyway. Now that I am beginning the semester at my teaching job, I don’t see how I can possibly keep up the same pace here and still get […]
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Filed under: personal
Perhaps Steve Clemons should stick to foreign policy. Affrerement, like adelphopoiesis in Byzantium (the terms mean the same thing), is not what the Boswells of the world would like us to think that it is, namely a medieval stamp of approval for homosexual relations. Byzantinists understand that ceremonies for adelphopoiesis were not ceremonial approvals of homosexual […]
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Filed under: history, culture
The Middle East, by contrast, was always the “elephant path of history,” as Israel’s fabled defense minister, Moshe Dayan, put it. Legions of conquerors have marched up and down the Levant, and from Alexander’s Macedonia all the way to India. Other prominent visitors were Julius Caesar, Napoleon and the German Wehrmacht.
This is not just ancient […]
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Filed under: politics, foreign policy
In his brief statement, Gonzales reflected on his up-from-the-bootstraps life story, the son of migrant farm workers from Mexico who didn’t finish elementary school. “Even my worst days as attorney general have been better than my father’s best days,” he said. ~MSNBC
But I’ll wager that his father didn’t lay waste to the federal department in charge of […]
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Filed under: politics
It was looking grim there for a while, but it seems that Gonzales is finally gone. I couldn’t imagine how he would have lasted another 17 months until the end. It’s encouraging to start the week with some good news.
Whether this is spin for our benefit or the actual story, it is remarkable how we […]
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Filed under: politics