Peace and Security
Two Cold War Milestones
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il consolidated communist rule. Czech leader Vaclav fought against corrupt communists. Yet they had some things in common, besides dying a week before Christmas. They both abandoned careers in the arts to become reluctant politicians, and they stabilized their respective countries during difficult times.
New Iran Sanctions Would Do More Harm than Good
Led by Sens. Mark Kirk (R-IL) and Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Congress moved recently to place new sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran.
Shiny New War
We Should Buy More White Flags
President Calvin Coolidge famously explained in 1925 that “the business of America is business.” Lately, that aphorism has been superseded by the model developed by Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama: Today, the business of America is war.
Ratcheting up the Rhetoric on Iran
Nothing is certain except for death and taxes. But in campaign season, it’s awfully predictable that Democratic politicians will do a little chest-thumping about foreign policy. As the 2012 presidential contest approaches, the Obama administration is ratcheting up its rhetoric against Iran, right on cue.
Cut the Pentagon’s Budget, Make the U.S. Safer
Pressured by the need to shrink the federal budget deficit, Congress is insisting that Pentagon spending can’t continue to grow at the galloping rate of the last decade. In response, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told Congress in October that he’s planning to cut $450 billion in planned military spending increases.
The Cost of Congressional Dithering
While members of Congress waste time naming post offices and devising ways to get seniors to pay for billionaires’ tax breaks through cuts in Medicare and Social Security, other important business is slipping through the cracks.
Is Iran Iraq All Over Again?
For at least the past two decades, political leaders in the United States and Israel have warned that Iran was on the threshold of building a nuclear weapon. From what we’ve been hearing lately from the media, ‘Iran is once again…still on that threshold.
Border War Rumors
Grim-faced military officers and ashen-faced politicians describe a horrific “war zone,” with “hundreds of people murdered” and “citizens under attack around the clock.” Some of the politicos say that the situation is so dire that it “may require our military.”
Nuclear Turkeys
By the time you sit down for Thanksgiving dinner, the 12-member congressional supercommittee will have succeeded in meeting its November 23 deadline to approve a plan to shrink the budget deficit by at least $1.2 trillion over the next decade. Or it will have failed – and produced a turkey instead.
