Unidentified members of Iran’s august Assembly of Experts, purported under Iran’s revolutionary constitution to oversee and be capable of removing that nation’s ’supreme leader’ who never faces the verdict of the average voter. (The same can apparently be said of that nation’s president, but setting that aside for the moment … While Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad...

As we’ve all heard by now, Western Europe is relieved, and Eastern Europe is aggrieved, over President Barack Obama’s decision to scrap Bush-era missile shield bases in Poland and the Czech Republic. This article by Marek Magierowski of Poland’s Rceczpospolita offers a good sense of how Poles view the decision. So why did Obama do it? Magierowski gives three reasons: “First, the Americans...

Prof. John K. Galbraith, a former US ambassador, once described India as a “functioning anarchy”. Galbraith’s famous quote comes to mind on hearing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s recent helpless cry that the country’s fight against Maoists/Naxalites is failing. Such public display of vulnerability appears pathetic, although it is a fact that governing a large democratic and diverse country like...

Well, well, well. Look at what the New York Times has buried on page 3 of its article about the joint announcement by Pres. Obama and by French and British leaders Nicolas Sarkozy and Gordon Brown that Iran is building a secret underground plant to manufacture nuclear fuel.

The building of a prisoner of war camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba was as big a screw-up by the Bush administration as is attempts by the Obama administration to close it. Neither administration understood the long-range problems inherent in the system that was created. That’s the analysis we observe in stories today reported in three major newspapers. Retiring Marine Major Gen. Michael Lehnert was the commander...

In the famous Peter O’Toole film “Night Of The Generals”, the record-keeper in Paris tells Omar Sharif (acting as German officer investigating murders of prostitutes in Nazi-occupied Warsaw and Paris): “Major, why do you bother…All Generals are murderers!” That was a film dialogue. In real life Generals are not murderers. They are expected to carry out the commands of their...

Nate Beeler, The Washington Examiner This cartoon is copyrighted and licensed to run on TMV. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Women in the military have been—by tradition, by law, policy or regulation—excluded from various duties. One of the last remaining exclusions is women serving in “front-line combat jobs.” But, even here, according to the Navy Times, “combat roles have become blurred during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, in which irregular warfare marked by insurgent roadside bombs and a lack...

First, a personal story intended as full disclosure for the second part of this post. I immigrated to the United States at the age of 17 from the Netherlands. Immediately upon reaching my 18th birthday, I enlisted in the U.S. Air Force. In those days, the 50s, a legal immigrant could join the U.S. armed forces upon signing a “declaration of intent” to become a U.S. citizen. Serving in the U.S. armed...

That is the bombshell (you should pardon the pun) that Andrea Mitchell dropped on Morning Joe today. That number, by the way, is not in the unclassified version of the McChrystal report that was leaked to Bob Woodward. It’s in the complete, unredacted, classified report — according to Tom Andrews at The Huffington Post, Mitchell got it from “an independent source”:

Glenn Greenwald has an interesting — and, in my opinion, astute — take on the Obama administration’s announcement that it will not seek new legislation from Congress to place indefinite preventive detention within a Constitutional legal framework, but rather will rely on the Bushian argument that the post-9/11 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) constitutes sufficient authority...

One of the negative effects of changes in national security policy during the Bush administration was the advent of “indefinite detention” as a way of handling potentially dangerous terrorists. (Or, in some cases, people who were picked up for being in the wrong place at the wrong time with a name having too many vowels in it.) Out on the campaign trail last year, one of the things I liked about...

Jennifer Rubin of Commentary, reacting to Obama’s UN speech:

The President spoke to a contentious body of politicians today, asking them to stop bickering and start working together, and was greeted with applause. No one yelled “You lie!” The United Nations, as critics will be quick to point out, is not the US Congress, and this attitude was summed up in a UK Telegraph headline even before the speech: “The UN loves Barack Obama because he is weak.” The...

With McChrystal et al. pushing for a significant troop increase — an irresponsible one, in my view, given that it’s not clear anymore what the purpose of the war is — this comes as something of a pleasant development: President Obama is exploring alternatives to a major troop increase in Afghanistan, including a plan advocated by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to scale back American forces...

After becoming an expert on U.S-Russia relations during her campaign for the vice-presidency by claiming that Russia could be seen from Alaska, Sarah Palin can now add a second major power to her foreign policy credentials: China. By reading a prepared, major foreign policy speech before a packed ballroom in Hong Kong’s Grand Hyatt hotel, Sarah Palin has now clearly and firmly cemented her foreign policy...

Continuing with our global coverage of President Obama’s decision to put an end to Bush-era anti-missile bases in East Europe, this is a German editorial roundup of nine regional newspapers from the Financial Times Deutschland. They are unanimously supportive of ditching the bases. For example, medium-sized newspaper, the Fuldaer Zeitung of Fulda, opines on the president’s decision: “From...

The Afghanistan war issue is heating in the U.S. and Europe as the war reaches a fork in the road — and a decision point about the future: Ron Beasley looks at Obama and Afghanistan against the context of LBJ and Vietnam. Sen John McCain calls for more troops. Obama considers a strategy shift. NRO’s Jim Geraghty says the Democrats never really meant what was said during the campaign on Afghanistan. Reuters...

Talk about the Law of Unintended Consequences:

So who comes out ahead of President Obama’s decision to freeze or scrap Europe-based, Bush-era anti-missile sites? According to this op-ed by Dominique Jung of France’s Les Dernieres Nouvelles d’Alsace, Barack Obama is looking like a pretty good card player right at the moment. For Les Dernières Nouvelles d’Alsace, Dominique Jung writes of why East and West Europe differ in their reactions...

Headline writers for newspapers and the larger Internet websites have the power to sell, taint, cajole, tease and distort the writer’s works in order to lure the reader to take the bait. I took the bait, hook, line and sinker this morning from the following headline on MSNBC’s web page: WHY OBAMA WISHES HE WERE KING Or at the very least, he wishes he were Mel Brooks The article was written by Bill...

Continuing with our global coverage of President Obama’s decision to scrap Bush-era missile shield plans for Eastern Europe (more from Poland, Germany and France later this evening), we just posted something by Alexander Golz of Russia’s Yezhednevniy Zhurnal that is likely to surprise many American cable news viewers. What people of the neocon persuasion are calling the mistake of an amateur is...

Greenwald: Advocates of escalation in Afghanistan chose Bob Woodward to “reprise his role as warmonger hagiographer” by publishing Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s “confidential” memo to the President arguing for increased troops. As Digby notes, the vague case for continuing to occupy that country is virtually identical to every instance where America’s war-loving Foreign Policy...

Is it the job of Gen. Stanley McChrystal to tell the POTUS what the military strategy should be in Afghanistan and threaten to resign if the President does not comply? Or is it rather Gen. McChrystal’s job to recommend a change in military strategy, wait for the President’s decision, and then carry out that decision as ordered?

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TWENTY-FIFTH LEGISLATURE, 2009 STATE OF HAWAII H.C.R. NO. 19 H.D.1 HOUSE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION STRONGLY URGING THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE AND THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES TO AWARD SGT. RAFAEL PERALTA THE MEDAL OF HONOR. 15 WHEREAS, his battalion redeployed to Iraq’s Anbar Province 16 in 2004 as part of Operation Phantom Fury to battle insurgents 17 in their stronghold of...