HEY IRAQ, HOW’S THAT WITHDRAWAL GOING? Peter Feaver, formerly of the NSC, has some sharp analysis over at Shadow Government, including an improbable comparison of Hillary Clinton to Dick Cheney: These [recent] attacks may simply be what Secretary Clinton has called “a signal that the rejectionists fear Iraq is going in the right direction.” This sounds eerily like the much-derided claim by Vice President Cheney that similar attacks back in 2006 were a sign of “desperation”...

Amateurs like me. If you’re not a scientist, how much can really you know? Even if you are a scientist, how much can you really know? This week, the New Yorker has a profile of James Hansen, the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, written by Elizabeth Kolbert. When I saw, something rang a bell. Two weeks ago, the Weekly Standard ran a piece on Hansen called The Man Who Cried Doom, written by Michael Goldfarb. Hansen has penchant for absurdity, so it isn’t...

I can’t believe Joe didn’t make that joke in his first post about Mark Sanford’s extra-marital adventures. Nor did Patrick or any of the commenters. Has America lost its sense of humor? In the blogosphere, it shouldn’t be long before this becomes a story that is more about the media than it is about Sanford. There will be an avalanche of coverage and we’ll have to ask whether the media should waste so much time on a sex scandal while Tehran is burning. A bit of speculation:...

In today’s news conference, President Obama came down hard on the Iranian regime for its failure to respect its citizens’ universal rights. At the same time, the President insisted that he was absolutely, in no way, not at all meddling in Iran’s internal affairs. In his words: I’ve made it clear that the United States respects the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran and is not interfering with Iran’s affairs…If the Iranian government seeks the respect...

The president’s news conference this afternoon provides much food for thought (transcript here). The president has been very careful until now about asserting that democracy and human rights are universal values. Yet today, he said once, and then repeated twice that: As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people have a universal right to assembly and free speech. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community,...

What are the beliefs that motivate extreme anti-abortion activists to murder the doctors that perform abortions? My friend and colleague Jon Shields provides careful answers to a question that usually provokes little more than partisan rhetoric. Jon, now a professor at Claremont McKenna, recounts the influence on the extremist movement of violent activist Michael Bray. There is little in Michael Bray’s early life to suggest that he would become the spiritual leader of the violent fringe. At...

CNN talks to Fareed Zakaria: Fareed Zakaria: One of the first things that strikes me is we are watching the fall of Islamic theocracy. CNN: Do you mean you think the regime will fall? Zakaria: No, I don’t mean the Iranian regime will fall soon. It may — I certainly hope it will — but repressive regimes can stick around for a long time. I mean that this is the end of the ideology that lay at the basis of the Iranian regime. The regime’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini,...

KFC’s new grilled chicken is made with rendered beef fat and plenty of MSG (monosodium glutamate). There are two ways you can find this out. First, you can read the 37-page long list of ingredients in all of KFC’s products. Or you can read this post by Laura McClure on Kevin Drum’s blog. Thanks for nothing, guys. Now I can’t tell my wife I’m being healthy when I get grilled chicken from KFC. Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

SHOULD WESTERN FIRMS SELL SPYWARE TO IRAN? Unquestionably, it’s pretty shameful for Nokia and Siemens to help the Iranian government monitor dissidents online. It’s one of those rare cases where private firms really should forego profits in the name of the public good. On the other hand, the sale of monitoring capabilities may have lulled Tehran into believing it had the situation under it control, which it clearly didn’t. Is there a third way? Nokia and Siemens could have consulted...

Reihan has a new blog at NRO called The Agenda. If you want to feel more educated, read Reihan’s book, just out in soft-cover. Personally, I’ll always think fondly of Reihan because he introduced me to Yes, Minister, the greatest political satire in history (and a better explanation of how bureaucracy works than any political science treatise I’ve read). Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

BOTH SIDES CLAIM VICTORY IN IRAN: Ahmadinejad and Mousavi both say they’ve won. What would a victory for either man mean for US-Iranian relations? Michael Singh has many good thoughts, including this one: It is vital to keep in mind that Iran’s presidential elections are not about the United States. As with elections everywhere, foreign policy will be only one element of voters’ decisions, and it will likely take a back seat to more pressing economic and social issues. Thus, while the...

REMEMBER IRAQ? The excellent Kori Schake explains why we should be paying more attention to Iraq, even though a reduction in bloodshed has removed Iraq from the headlines. Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

Remember when “Fight the smears!” was the Obama campaign’s rallying cry? It’s a lesson Paul Krugman should learn. Krugman writes, “Whatever dividing line there was between mainstream conservatism and the black-helicopter crowd seems to have been virtually erased.” The recent murders of an abortion provider and a Holocaust Museum guard supposedly prove his point. But that kind of logic only holds up if you are wearing a very big set of partisan and ideological...

CONSERVATIVES VS. THE TWO-STATE SOLUTION: George W. Bush is gone. There is no more pressure on conservatives to support Bush’s call for a two-state solution. Bibi Netanyahu is prime minister. Conservatives who oppose a two-state solution no longer have to explain why they reject the approach favored by Israel’s own government. Barack Obama is throwing his weight behind the two-state solution. Conservatives have every incentive to show that Obama’s approach is misguided. I have...

“Understanding the Hobbesian nature of international relations fundamentally grounds conservative foreign policy in reality.” That quote is from John Bolton’s op-ed in today’s Washington Times. Does Bolton’s description accurately characterize George W. Bush’s foreign policy? What about Dick Cheney’s? Hawkish policymakers like Cheney and Bolton certainly emphasize the Hobbesian nature of international relations. Yet there is a strong element of moral relativism...

What can a responsible satirist satirize at a time when America is blessed with a President who transcends irony and sarcasm? The American people, of course: “Obama Drastically Scales Back Goals For America After Visiting Denny’s” Cross-posted at Conventional Folly

While I was away, the 20th anniversary of the Tiannamen Square massacre on June 4, 1989 was observed (except in China). Dan Twining has a great post on why Tiannamen still matters today. Here’s his starting point: “We should start from the premise that the crackdown, and China’s subsequent rise as an authoritarian rather than a democratic superpower, was not inevitable. We know from both The Tiananmen Papers and Zhao Ziyang’s memoirs that the Communist Party leadership was...

In my eight lackadaisical days on St. Kitts, I didn’t pick up a single newspaper. I saw a handful of headlines while checking my e-mail, but didn’t read any full stories. Once in a while, CNN would be turned in one of the bars where I was having a drink. In short, I simulated the diminished state of news-awareness experienced every day by tens of millions of Americans, who need to focus on keeping their jobs, taking their kids to school, etc. I know a lot of educated people who look...

In several hours, I’ll be on a flight to St. Kitts for my honeymoon. Sue and I were married yesterday. We were honored to have my mother preside, in her capacity as rabbi. These words were read at the ceremony before the traditional Jewish wedding blessings or sheva brachot: Ultimately there comes a moment when a decision must be made. Ultimately two people who love each other must ask themselves how much they hope for as their love grows and deepens, and how much risk they are willing...

Andrew Exum (aka Abu Muqawama) has just updated his counterinsurgency reading list. It’s a great resource. The list begins with three items that Andrew identifies as absolute essentials for anyone studying counterinsurgency. Two of them are relatively short (but excellent) articles. The third is David Galula’s classic treatise from the 1960s, Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice. I recently took a second look at Galula, which I first read before my stint in Iraq. It is an...