Ten months and trillions of dollars after taking office, Barack Obama has finally found a way to make Republicans happy: Go to Europe, do a Bush impersonation, order Freedom Fries and tell those pusillanimous peace-mongers they would be toast if Americans weren’t always ready to come over there and kill bad people. Dick Cheney hasn’t weighed in yet, but Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich are thrilled with the...

Continuing with our translated foreign press coverage of how the United States is being portrayed at the Climate Summit in Copenhagen, this editorial from Estadao of Brazil illustrates the rupture that a leaked document, which originated in Denmark and seems to favor wealthy nations, has created between the developed and developing worlds. The Estadao editorial says in part: “The executive secretary of...

Guest post by Jonathan Powers and Robert Diamond Jon Powers is the Chief Operating Officer of the Truman National Security Project. He is a veteran of the Gulf War, serving as an officer in the United States Army, and the founder of War Kids Relief. He was previously Veterans Program Director at the Eleison Group, where he worked on outreach efforts by the progressive community to veterans and military families....

Is there any reason to believe that American troops will begin leaving Afghanistan in 18 months, as President Obama announced last week? Or, as this surprisingly forthright article from China’s state-controlled Guangzhou Daily asserts, was this just an eloquent rhetorical fig leaf to hide the fact that America won’t leave anytime soon? Implying shamelessness on Obama’s part, Columnist Dong...

Matthew Yglesias has a really good piece about morality and global warming:

Was Great Britain a democracy during the War of 1812? Given that in 1812, neither US Senators or the President were elected by direct vote of the electorate, can it be argued that the United States was a democracy back then? And, given that the electorate was composed only of white males, the notion that the US was a democracy in 1812, isn’t tenable, except in relative terms. Not to put too fine a point...

Earlier today, TMV co-blogger Tony Campbell took on President Obama for his reference to “just war theory” in his Nobel speech in Oslo. “Just war theory” is generally associated with Christian theology, specifically to Saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. Here is a blog post by Ron Ballew from 2006, which delineates what, under the theory, constitutes a just war. Does Mr. Obama’s...

My TMV colleague, Tony Campbell, wrote earlier today about President Obama’s reference to “just war” theory in his Nobel acceptance speech. Here is an interesting commentary on the speech from New Testament scholar, poet, and film and cultural critic, Ben Witherington.

While President Obama’s Nobel acceptance speech placated some of his US critics today, his recent decision to surge and withdraw in Afghanistan remains deeply controversial. Liberal critics upbraid the President for increasing US military forces there. Conservatives complain that Mr. Obama’s announcement of a date for the beginning of US military withdrawal from Afghanistan will only allow al Qaeda...

The White House sent Bob Gates and Hillary Clinton out on Sunday morning to do a set of joint interviews on Meet the Press, Face the Nation and This Week. (Fox had to settle for Gen. Petraeus. CNN got Jim Jones.) After his address to the nation on healthcare reform, Obama himself made the rounds on Sunday morning. I’m inclined to think that the President didn’t want to face the music this time,...

The Washington Post is getting clobbered for publishing an op-ed on climate change and the upcoming conference in Copenhagen by Sarah Palin that is filled with inaccuracies, misinformation, and outright falsehoods.

For those who have been patiently waiting for some scientific, authoritative vindication of their theories that homosexuality is immoral, a perversion or deviancy, not natural, etc., rejoice: Uganda’s ethics minister, James Nsaba Buturo, has just pronounced that homosexuality is “not natural in Uganda.” No doubt the rest of the civilized world will soon follow suit. To put teeth into this...

If you don’t read Shadow Government, you should. It’s a blog written by a lot of very smart people who held significant positions in the Bush administration. (No, that isn’t a contradiction, wiseguy.) Shadow Gov’s recent posts focus (naturally) on Afghanistan. One very interesting question comes from Peter Feaver — Did Obama’s speech give us any sense of why it took him...

AFGHANISTAN: A GOP TWOFER? David Obey, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee has introduced a war tax bill. “As presidential historian Robert Dallek reminds us, ‘war kills off great reform movements’,” Obey said, noting that World War I ended the Progressive Era, Korea ended Harry Truman’s Fair Deal and Vietnam ended Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. Now, I know that’s supposed to be...

Even if we assume that God created planet earth and everything on it including human beings less than 20,000 years ago, that’s still a long time in dog or cat years, and even in human years. Assuming each generation is spaced from 15 to 25 years apart, or 20 years on average, that constitutes 1,000 generations. For most of the past 10,000 years, we practiced all sorts of discarded religious beliefs and only...

There’s certainly a place in this world for more and more good Chanuka songs.  But this one by U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch actually has potential. Be sure to read the accompanying article by The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg. (The holiday starts this Friday evening.) Eight Days of Hanukkah from Tablet Magazine on Vimeo.

How do you defeat your perceived “enemy”? Use bombs, grenades and drones? Substitute the bombs with books? Or, have a mix of both? Greg Mortenson, a humanitarian worker and author of two best-selling books, has demonstrated the power of books, and education, even in the highly violence-ridden worlds of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Mortenson is finding admirers in unlikely places. In the words of Admiral...

Continuing with our coverage of NATO reaction to President Obama’s Afghanistan troop surge, this article from Poland’s Rceczpospolita demonstrates more determination to continue to assist the United States than we’ve seen from newspapers in any other U.S. ally – barring, perhaps, Great Britain. But along with a staunch statement in support for the Alliance, the article also contains...

So this is the editorial published today by 56 newspapers (all but one outside the United States) that is causing the right to self-immolate (emphasis is mine):

‘OBAMA GOES TO WAR’ As we have seen over recent days, the pressure on French President Nicolas Sarkozy to come out in favor the Obama surge is rapidly increasing – particularly after his proclamation to the French people that he “wouldn’t send another man to Kabul.” Offering a glimpse of the French political terrain, Olivier Picard writes for France’s Les Dernieres...