Okay, I’ll admit I’m surprised Hiatt decided to go the route of supporting the democratic rule of law and nonviolent conflict resolution — although he cannot resist a bit of propagandizing about the evil “Chavistas.”

John Hannah is being roundly mocked for his NRO piece today in which he complains that Hillary Clinton is doing harm to U.S. interests abroad by contrasting Pres. Obama’s foreign policies with those of the previous administration, to the latter’s discredit. In her recent trip to Pakistan, Clinton told a group of students that she spent her entire Senate career opposing Bush’s policies, and...

Senator Lieberman of Connecticut has angered Democrats in his opposition to the “public option” for healthcare reform. Well this is not the first time he has gone his own way. It is perfectly understandable because he is officially an independent and thus he has no duty to the Democratic Party. He answers only to his constituents and himself. Just because he caucuses with Democrats who foolishly permitted...

There are questions in France about why, two years after stepping down as president of his country, Jacques Chirac is standing trial for corruption charges stemming from his time as mayor of Paris in 1977 to 1995. But the questions seem to have less to do with the substance of the charges than with an apparent French tendency to overlook bad behavior on the part of prominent people, especially if it goes back...

Here.

Fox News Radio host John Gibson asked Liz Cheney for her thoughts on Barack Obama’s recent trip to Dover Air Force Base to witness the arrival of the bodies of U.S. troops who died in Afghanistan. Here is her response, via TPMDC:

The ongoing negotiations between Honduras’s coup leaders and president-in-exile Manuel Zelaya have borne fruit:

U.S. National Security Adviser James Jones faces Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at the Kremlin, Oct. 29. The American right will no doubt have a field day with this article from Russia’s leading business daily, Kommersant. According the Kommersant’s Vladimir Solovyev, the White House has made clear that it is eager to see the START III nuclear reduction treaty signed before President Obama...

Moving on to another French view of the Afghan conflict, Laurent Joffrin of the newspaper Liberation suggests that however bad the situation may be, the West in the person of President Barack Obama should not pull out of Afghanistan – yet. For Liberation, Laurent Joffrin writes in part: “A second round in the presidential election has now been scheduled. The outlines of a state, painfully, are...

Is it a fact that President Obama is ‘dithering’ – as former VP Cheney has said – over a decision on Iraq? In his editorial for Le Figaro yesterday, influential French columnist Pierre Rousselin seemed to agree, if not in a much more sympathetic fashion than Mr. Cheney. For Le Figaro, Pierre Rousselin writes in part: “From theory to practice, Obama is having a decidedly hard time...

The Japanese seem to really like President Obama. This goes beyond last year’s song from Obama City in Fukui Prefecture (it’s easiest to think of prefectures as being like states). Japanese youths are now using the President’s name as the verb “obamu”, which means “To ignore inexpedient and inconvenient facts or realities, think ‘Yes we can, Yes we can,’ and proceed...

I use the words, “stands witness,” because they have a very singular significance. George W. Bush did meet privately with selected families of fallen Americans, but he did not put himself there on the tarmac in the dead of night to witness, directly and in person, the graphic human consequences of his war policies. Whether the war in Afghanistan, or any war, is justified and necessary, or not, to...

Incredibly, President Barack Obama’s in-depth Afghanistan review is underplaying the evident peril that arming unruly warlords empowers them to use American war techniques to scuttle his agenda and settle mutual scores with more lethal force instead . It is fast-forwarding two great dangers. First, it is ensuring that Afghanistan can have no central government in Kabul capable of enforcing discipline on the...

Message to America: A bewildered man emerges Wednesday from a restaurant in Peshawar, Pakistan, to a scene of utter devastation. The Taliban have claimed responsibility for the attack, which killed at least 107. If this editorial from Pakistan’s The Nation is anything to go by, Hillary Clinton’s “hearts and minds” visit to Pakistan is, as the headline says, “falling flat”...

The vote is in. Tom Friedman says no more troops for Afghanistan. Why? When I think back on all the moments of progress in that part of the world — all the times when a key player in the Middle East actually did something that put a smile on my face — all of them have one thing in common: America had nothing to do with it. America helped build out what they started, but the breakthrough didn’t start...

Tom Friedman says don’t send more troops to Afghanistan, because there are no positive trends to build on, like the Anbar Awakening before the surge in Iraq. Yet back in 2007, Friedman condemned the surge precisely because there was no progress to build on: January 3, 2007 Now President Bush wants a “surge” of more U.S. troops to Baghdad, in one last attempt to bring order. Whenever I hear this surge...

David Adams commanded a US advisory team in the Afghan province of Khost. Ann Marlowe reported from Afghanistan. They write, From the beginning of 2007 to March 2008, the 82nd Airborne Division’s strategy in Khost proved that 250 paratroopers could secure a province of a million people in the Pashtun belt. The key to success in Khost—which shares a 184 kilometer-long border with Pakistan’s lawless...

There’s plenty of material out there, but Steve Biddle’s article in TNR [subscription only] stands head and shouders above the rest. Even if you’re against more troops, you should test your logic against Biddle. For example, NYT columnist Nick Kristof wrote: The United States was born of our ancestors’ nationalistic resentment of a foreign power whose troops we saw as occupiers, not protectors....

Amid the torrent of news, one might have missed one of the largest drug busts in history just days ago – against La Familia – Mexico’s most deadly narco-trafficking mafia group. Confiscated by over 3,000 agents from emergency and security services in 19 states were 1,100 pounds of marijuana, 770 pounds of methamphetamine, 138 pounds of cocaine, $3.4 million, 144 weapons of various calibers,...

Matthew Yglesias has some interesting thoughts on conflicting values for progressives in the Israel-Palestinian conflict:

Michael Goldfarb is not interested in constructive criticism of J Street. What Mike wants is to expose J Street as a fringe, left-wing activist group that only pretends to be pro-Israel to advance it’s relativist agenda. So call Mike partisan, but don’t forget that partisan critics often make substantive points, regardless of their intentions. And Mike is both very sharp and very entertaining,...

The New York Times is reporting now that two day care centers were hit in the blast. At least 30 children are dead:

It was a busy weekend and I’d like to give people at the Moderate Voice a heads up on some of what we’ve been covering. From Pakistan’s The Nation Newspaper, the editorial headlined Hillary Clinton Should Mind Her Own Media! attacks the secretary of state for criticizing Pakistan’s media coverage of the huge U.S. aid bill to that nation. Then for Pakistan’s Pak Tribune in an...

Has Malaysia gone Islamic? Maznah Mohamad, visiting senior research fellow at the Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore, looks at the issue on RealClearWorld. Here’s how he begins his piece: In Malaysia’s current political climate, it is no longer possible to distinguish Islamic radicals from Islamic moderates. Despite official boasting about the country’s diverse...

Are the nation’s fiscal, economic, military, political and social challenges setting us up for a Military Coup? Will the U.S. Military Industrial Complex, acting through our Joint Chiefs of Staff or some other high-level corps of U.S. Military officers, and supported by a variety of angry business leaders and extreme conservatives be so resentful of any changes to our national priorities that they would encourage...