Peace and Security
My Favorite Republican
Can you imagine a Republican leader saying something like that now? Not if the leader is Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Sarah Palin, Jon Kyl, or Eric Cantor. Had Ike been that kind of Republican he’d have said: “I want our new president to be a one-term president and I expect our party in Congress to work to make him so.”
Military Industrial Humor
No More Mr. Nice Autocracy
Egyptian current events prove one point for good: Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, U.S. presidents wish their favored Arab states would forever remain nice, docile autocracies.
What if Jared Loughner Were a Muslim Arab Immigrant?
The repercussions of the attempted assassination in Tucson of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, in which six people were murdered and 13 wounded, continue to resonate. The discussion–and discussions about the discussion–continues. Meanwhile, we’re failing to have a meaningful debate about how we can achieve real changes that would make a repeat of this tragedy impossible.
Be Glad You’re Not Yemeni
Yemen is finally being thrust upon American consciousness. Little good can come of that. Up to now, the Yemenis had been allowed to suffer in private desperation. That’s over.
El-Oughner
Wanted: 21st-Century Gun Laws for 21st-Century Weapons
Before the Tucson shootings are lost forever in the mists of time (which, given this country’s attention span, figures to be two weeks from now), we might do well to ponder the various reactions to the outrage.
The Eternal Drug War
The Afghanistan War sometimes seems interminable. It just became the longest hot war in U.S. history. The Cold War was longer; Now Pentagon officials dream of holding Kabul longer than that. Europe’s Hundred Years War remains the record holder, but things moved slower back then.
Ruled by Rifles
The Pentagon and the National Rifle Association have a lot in common these days. They’re in love with guns. They maintain powerful lobbies. They refuse to acknowledge the dangerous consequences of their policies.
The Tragic U.S. Strategy in Afghanistan
Albert Einstein famously defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” If that doesn’t accurately describe the more than nine-year-old U.S. war in Afghanistan, I don’t know what does.
