Obama’s 2010 Policy and Iran: Misconceptions Guarantee Failure by Barry Rubin A friend of mine is angry, saying I’m too tough on President Barack Obama and that nothing he does pleases me. Well, I wish he’d do more that pleases me, and disconcerts America’s enemies. True, he has done three good things lately: his Nobel speech, which sounded like it was actually given by a U.S. president;...

2009 was a disappointing year partly because President Barack Obama fell short of the hopes raised when he came to power last January following his inspiring electioneering. Perhaps we expected too much of just a man. Most of the world, even North Korea, expected a healer’s touch but Obama looks increasingly like a fly trapped in a spider’s web of political complexities. 2010 will tell whether he is mainly...

There is a wall… The CIA memorial wall at CIA headquarters, is located in the Old Headquarters Building. There are 83 stars on the wall. Each represents the a death of a CIA agent in the course of duty. Though the image of CIA might for some be slouch hats, spy vs spy, old guys with white hair and hoary knowledge, these are the faces of the mostly very young CIA employees. Here, they were celebrating...

Happy New Year Moderate Voice people! So which superpower or superpower pretender had the best year in 2009? Was it China, Russia or the United States? According to columnist Fyodor Lukyanov of the Russian newspaper Gazeta – the answer is unequivocally China. Outlining the challenges both the United States and Russia have in dealing with the new powerhouse, for Gazeta, Fyodor Lukyanov writes in part: Argentine...

Way back in early June, when Mr. Cheney was well into his “Obama is soft on terrorism” tour, Frank Rich wrote a column in the New York Times titled, “Who Is to Blame for the Next Attack?” In his piece, Rich rightly condemned Cheney’s attempts to once again “using lies and fear… rewrite history and escape accountability for the failed Bush presidency…” Rich was referring to Cheney’s infamous...

RJ Matson, The St. Louis Post Dispatch This cartoon is copyrighted and licensed to appear on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

The cover of the current issue of the New Republic blares, The Battle for Tora Bora: The Untold Story. It’s a good article, but it’s actually an old story. Some of the details are new, but I think it’s been at least five years since we’ve known that Bin Laden was cornered in the caves of Tora Bora in December of 2001, but the chain of command rejected a request to send in US ground...

Will this be another pro forma New Year’s Eve? According to reports, the U.S. has issued a warning that there are fears tonight could be marred by the same scourge that has cursed this most unhappy of decades: terrorism: Terrorists may be planning a New Year’s Eve attack on the Indonesian island of Bali, Indonesian and US Embassy officials warned today. In an Embassy email to US citizens, the island’s...

“Passionate hatred,” Eric Hoffer wrote half a century ago, “can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. Thus people haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance.” Days after a 23-year-old Nigerian demonstrates the enduring truth of this observation by Eisenhower’s...

Uh, oh: there are suggestions now that one solution to detect passengers with underwear bombs might be bomb sniffing dogs. Will the crotch sniffing dog become a (dreaded) fixture at airports? And can dogs be trained to go gentle when they eagerly plow their noses into crotch content evaluation chores? (And if that’s not how it’ll be done, how can they prevent a dog from ad libbing and doing it in...

Could we be seeing a bit of a revival of the legacy of George W. Bush? That’s the underlying implication of this article by Yves Thréard of France’s Le Figaro newspaper. For Le Figaro, Yves Threard writes in part: Humility prohibits untimely and definitive comments on al-Qaeda, that army of criminals that is regularly described as being held at bay. Does it function under a centralized command...

Charles Krauthammer thinks that the President should be issuing stronger statements about the situation in Iran, as he seems to believe that the words of the President can affect change in this situation (from his WaPo column,  2009: The year of living fecklessly): [R]evolutions succeed at that singular moment, that imperceptible historical inflection, when the people, and particularly those in power, realize...

I cannot believe that Dick Cheney waited six whole days to criticize Barack Obama for waiting three days to make a non-hysterical public statement about the attempted airline bombing on Christmas Day. How could he let Pete Hoekstra get ahead of him on such an obvious opportunity to turn a national security event into a carnival of political grandstanding?

I must admit I was not shocked to hear a secret report for Pentagon brass that efforts to train the Afghan National Army (ANA) are beset with deep-rooted problems which could take years to overcome. NBC-TV foreign correspondent Richard Engel said the privately-commissioned report: 1) — Contends nepotism, corruption and absenteeism among ANA officers makes success impossible. ANA troops on the ground, however,...

Mike Allen bylines an article for Politico re: Dick Cheney’s tirade about Obama “trying to pretend we are not at war.” Andrew Sullivan accuses Allen of being a “stenographer” for Cheney, relaying the former VP’s accusations verbatim, sans critical analysis. I don’t know much about Allen and I suppose there could be a history here that triggered Sullivan’s reaction;...

WASHINGTON — Certain decades shape the country’s political life for generations by leaving behind an era to embrace or, at least as often, to scorn. The 1960s were definitely such a decade. The 1930s qualify, and so do the 1980s. But as important as all these periods have been, their significance may be dwarfed by the reckless and squandered decade that is, mercifully, ending. I’m...

Our political Quote of the Day is the key part of a piece by Josh Gerstein in The Politico which notes that the Republicans and the news media are reacting to President Barack Obama’s delayed statement on the failed airplane bombing in way totally at variance with how they reacted to Bush. In Bush’s case? Not a peep when he didn’t react for nearly a week: Eight years ago, a terrorist bomber’s...

Let me begin by making it clear that I’m not suggesting the following idea should be adopted or that it would work, I merely offer it as an interesting hypothetical. So please skip if you can comments on that angle. It came to me via a radio show I was listening to on the way home from running errands. The host was discussing the bizzare rules of engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan which, according to...

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

I have been a strong and vocal supporter of equal rights for all: whites and blacks, straights and gays, men and women. With respect to the latter, men and women, I am delighted at how far women have come in recent years at achieving full equality with men. I am also pleased at how women are increasingly accepted and integrated into our armed forces, albeit they still have a long way to go here—as noted...

Guest post by Jared Stancombe Jared Stancombe, a 2009 graduate of Indiana University, is currently an analyst for a U.S. government agency responsible for national security. He is also in the officer selection process for the U.S. Marine Corps. He lives in Washington, D.C. Republicans are chomping at the bit to blame the latest terrorist incident on President Obama. They claim he let it happen because he has...

Cartoon by Mike Keefe, The Denver Post. This cartoon is copyrighted and licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

Via ABC News:  Two al Qaeda Leaders Behind Northwest Flight 253 Terror Plot Were Released by U.S. Two of the four leaders allegedly behind the al Qaeda plot to blow up a Northwest Airlines passenger jet over Detroit were released by the U.S. from the Guantanamo prison in November, 2007, according to American officials and Department of Defense documents. Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the Northwest...

John Darkow, Columbia Daily Tribune, Missouri This cartoon is copyrighted and licensed to appear on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

The Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad reports today that Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport was not using special millimeter wave scanners that would have detected the explosive powder that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab used to set off the fizzled explosion aboard Northwest flight 253. According to Schiphol airport spokesperson Mirjam Snoerwang, “European regulations tell us we can only put people through them...