It’s time to admit defeat
It was to be the war that would establish empire as an American fact. It would result in a thousand-year Pax Americana. It was to be “mission accomplished” all the way. And then, of course, it...
View ArticleObama’s “mission accomplished” moment?
Here’s the ad for this moment in Washington (as I imagine it): Militarized superpower adrift and anxious in alien world. Needs advice. Will pay. Pls respond qkly. PO Box 1776-2012, Washington,...
View ArticleThe final unraveling of Afghanistan?
Is it all over but the (anti-American) shouting -- and the killing? Are the exits finally coming into view?Sometimes, in a moment, the fog lifts, the clouds shift, and you can finally see the landscape...
View ArticleAfghanistan syndrome
Take off your hat. Taps is playing. Almost four decades late, the Vietnam War and its post-war spawn, the Vietnam Syndrome, are finally heading for their American grave. It may qualify as the longest...
View ArticleAmerica’s drone exceptionalism
Here’s the essence of it: you can trust America’s crème de la crème, the most elevated, responsible people, no matter what weapons, what powers, you put in their hands. No need to constantly look over...
View ArticleMemorial Day’s lessons in amnesia
It’s the saddest reading around: the little announcements that dribble out of the Pentagon every day or two -- those terse, relatively uninformative death notices: rank; name; age; small town, suburb,...
View ArticleElecting an assassin-in-chief
Be assured of one thing: whichever candidate you choose at the polls in November, you aren’t just electing a president of the United States; you are also electing an assassin-in-chief. The last two...
View ArticleIt couldn’t happen here, it does happen there
"Do you do this in the United States? There is police action every day in the United States... They don't call in airplanes to bomb the place." -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai denouncingU.S. air...
View ArticleDear Class of 2012, life isn’t easy
Class of 2012, greetings! It’s a deceptively glorious day, even under this tent in the broiling heat of an August-style afternoon in mid-June on this northeastern campus. Another local temperature...
View ArticleWashington’s default military solution
Americans may feel more distant from war than at any time since World War II began. Certainly, a smaller percentage of us -- less than 1% -- serves in the military in this all-volunteer era of ours...
View ArticleThe outrageous economics of maintaining classified information
When my daughter was little and I read to her regularly, one illustrated book was a favorite of ours. In a series of scenes, it described frustrating incidents in the life of a young girl, each ending...
View ArticleAfghanistan’s escalating violence
Imagine for a moment that almost once a week for the last six months somebody somewhere in this country had burst, well-armed, into a movie theater showing a superhero film and fired into the audience....
View ArticleLosing in Afghanistan
In the wake of several deaths among its contingent of troops in a previously peaceful province in Afghanistan, New Zealand (like France and South Korea) is now expediting the departure of its 140...
View ArticleAmerica’s war monopoly
It’s pop-quiz time when it comes to the American way of war: three questions, torn from the latest news, just for you. Here’s the first of them, and good luck!Two weeks ago, 200 U.S. Marines began...
View ArticleObama’s true challenge: Foreign policy, not Mitt
Since this is my version of an election piece, I plan to get the usual stuff out of the way fast.So yes, the smartest political odds-givers around believe President Obama has a distinct edgeover Mitt...
View ArticleHumbled giant
Americans lived in a “victory culture” for much of the twentieth century. You could say that we experienced an almost 75-year stretch of triumphalism -- think of it as the real “American Century” --...
View ArticleAmerica’s supersized elections
Obesity is an American plague -- and no, I’m not talking about overweight Americans. I’m talking about our overweight, supersized presidential campaign. I’m talking about Big Election, the thing...
View ArticleFour more years — of gridlock!
In the fall of 1948, Harry Truman barnstormed the country by train, repeatedly bashing a “do-nothing Congress,” and so snatched victory from the jaws of defeat in that year’s presidential campaign....
View ArticlePetraeus: American decline writ small
History, it is said, arrives first as tragedy, then as farce. First as Karl Marx, then as the Marx Brothers. In the case of twenty-first century America, history arrived first as George W. Bush (and...
View ArticleDear Barack: Stop terrorizing the planet
President Barack Obama The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. 20500Dear President Obama,Nothing you don’t know, but let me just say it: the world’s a weird place. In my younger...
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