“Thanks to our brave men and women in uniform, al Qaeda is weaker than it’s ever been, and Osama bin Laden will never again walk the face of this Earth. That’s what change is.”
Politics
A National Guard Keepsake…
Of course, some folks disagree.
The Changing of the Guard
I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member.
The sentiment is usually attributed to Groucho Marx, but as of this week it works for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, too.
“Clintonizing” Perpetual War
In the winter of 2002, a close friend, a liberal staffer on Capitol Hill, asked me if I thought the crazy fulminations of the neocons and the tough-guy rantings of an insecure President [1] could result in a war with Iraq? My answer was something like ‘read the Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August and you will get a good idea of …
Lost & Found Department: Iraq
Beating the War Drums in Versailles on the Potomac
On 12 December, I described a concatenation of warmongering pressures that were shaping the popular psyche in favor of bombing Iran. Now, in a 21 December essay, Steven Walt describes a further escalation of these pressures — …
An Army Apart (cont.)
Echoing our cover story of last month, Army Captain Damon Armeni wonders how the U.S. military will fare if it and society continue to drift apart. Armeni, now finishing his Masters in foreign affairs at the University of …
The Medal of Honor: 150 Years of Valor
In 1861, Iowa Senator James Grimes proposed a medal to honor the bravery of Navy personnel, which Abraham Lincoln signed into law 150 years ago today, Dec. 21, 1861. That following summer, Lincoln signed authorization for an Army …
Celebrating Iraq Withdrawal: Tempting Fate?
It has been three days since the last U.S. troops left Iraq. Tuesday will mark the third time President Obama has celebrated the end of the war. No one is going to quibble with a heartfelt Hooah! for the troops for a job well …
The Super Committee: Failure at Any Cost
It comes as no surprise that the bicameral and bipartisan super committee — that 12-person debt panel charged with finding $1.2 trillion in deficit savings over the next 10 years — failed in its mandate. Its members’ …
The Question of German Power Returns to Europe
Since the middle of the 19th Century, the central questions in European politics have been the closely-connected questions of nationalism and the rise of German power. As my good friend and eminent historian Gabriel Kolko shows in this brilliant essay, the post-war solutions of NATO and the European Union, together with the exigencies …
Bullet Dodged
White House: We’ll Gloat If We Want
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mBGZiKi9yQ&feature=player_embedded]
When we suggested Thursday that it might be nice if people toned down their political rhetoric for awhile over the end of the U.S. military’s role in Iraq, we didn’t have President Obama in mind. Turns out, we should have.