It was with a good bit of disappointment that I read my friend Ed Morrissey’s take over at Hot Air on the decision by Gen McChrystal to give a speech on war strategy in London last week. Of course, to the best of my reccolection, Ed hasn’t served in uniform, so he may not be as familiar with the Military way as those of us who have been there. McChrystal may not know the ways of Washington, but...

WASHINGTON — At a White House dinner with a group of historians at the beginning of the summer, Robert Dallek, a shrewd student of both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, offered a chilling comment to President Obama. “In my judgment,” he recalls saying, “war kills off great reform movements.” The American record is pretty clear: World War I brought the Progressive...

Libyan Despot Muammar Qaddafi succeeded in amusing and ticking off quite a few people last week with his rambling speech at the United Nations, which he made, according to him, not due to his role as dictator of Libya or president of the U.N. Security Council [yes - Qaddafi presently holds the rotating presidency of that body], but in his capacity as African Union chairman. According to Noor al-Harby, a...

As much as I detest the phrase “defining moment” — a journalistic cliche that has is a pleasant as hearing blackboard chalk scrape — President Barack Obama now faces a….defining moment, in his presidency. Will he give Gen. Stanley McChrystal the 40,000 troops he says he needs to successfully fight the battle in Afghanistan? In blogs, talk radio, TV and cable everyone is talking...

Just yesterday, I wrote about how the opinions and suggestions —expert and non-expert— about what to do in Afghanistan are all over the map, ranging pretty much from “How to Win in Afghanistan” to “How to Lose in Afghanistan,” and making one of our nation’s most critical and perilous endeavors look like a do-it-yourself project. This morning’s New York Times has a similar compendium...

Some readers occasionally comment that some of our contributors write or comment more frequently and extensively on events or news items that support their own political views or their own opinions on issues. Without admitting that my colleagues do such, and speaking strictly for myself, I find that this is a natural tendency, but one that I try to “control,” periodically. For example, I believe that way...

Col. Om Prakash, author of The Efficacy of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, published in Joint Force Quarterly, an official Department of Defense journal published by the Chair of the Joint Chiefs: The law as it currently stands does not prohibit homosexuals from serving in the military as long as they keep it secret. This has led to an uncomfortable value disconnect as homosexuals serving, estimated...

While doing some research on the Afghanistan war for another publication, I soon discovered that there is no shortage of opinions—many of them “expert” opinions—on how to conduct and conclude that war. It made me realize how excruciatingly difficult it must be for the president—faced with an overabundance of advisers and advice—to divine the right policy and strategy to bring that...

Goldfarb has the goods. Four-and-a-half months ago, Chairman Carl Levin and eight other Democratic members of the Senate Armed Services Committee signed a letter to President Obama that began We agree that the United States has a vital national interest in ensuring that Afghanistan never again becomes a safe haven from which al Qaeda can plot attacks against our homeland, and that achieving this objective requires...

By my count, there are a half-dozen posts about Roman Polanski on TMV’s front page right now. There are zero posts about Iran. May I suggest some reading about this obscure issue? For opposing views on sanctions and regime change, I recommend a pair of columns by Robert Kagan and Andrew Albertson that ran together in Wednesday’s Washington Post. Bottom line: The Swiss won’t rescue us again.

Since despite having angered President Obama, the Israelis have succeeded in rejecting his demand that they halt settlements on Palestinian land, is it time the Palestinians took a page from Israel’s book and anger President Obama as well? According to K. Selim of Algeria’s Le Quotidien d’Oran, by failing to reject Obama’s request to have his photo taken with Israeli Leader Benjamin Netanyahu...

Today – October 2 – is Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s (or Mahatma Gandhi’s) birth anniversary . Gandhi once said that if we are not careful then seven “deadly sins” will destroy us. They are: a) “Wealth Without Work”; b) “Pleasure Without Conscience”; c) “Knowledge Without Character; d) Commerce (Business) Without Morality (Ethics); e) Science...

I always admired Prof John K. Galbraith, the US ambassador to India, for his remarkable insight, professionalism and warmth. His son, Peter W. Galbraith, until recently the top American in the UN mission in Afghanistan, appears to have inherited the same wonderful qualities of his no-nonsense dad. Peter Galbraith was fired yesterday after refusing to take part in what he called “a cover-up” of...

The Iraqi Army Diaries, Entry 1 (First in a series) By S.D. Liddick In the spring of 2009 I embedded with the U.S. Army’s 1-63 Combined Arms Battalion, in the small town of Mahmudiyah, 20 miles south of Baghdad. The town is a cardinal point on what American soldiers have termed the Triangle of Death. Within a month I was offered a de facto embed spot with the Iraqi Army (IA), by General Mohammed, commander...

The War on Terror, confusing and anxious-making as it may be, has produced one encouraging side effect in American politics: The gung-ho is gone as all sides concede the military effort in Afghanistan is a dangerous enterprise with an unknowable outcome. As President Obama goes face-to-face with General McChrystal today by tele-conference, the debate over what to do next has been a good deal less rancorous than...

For those who have been following the European reaction to President Obama’s decision to ditch the Bush-era anti-missile shield, you know that the divide between East and West Europe has been stark. This article by Bartosz Weglarczyk of Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza, in very cool-eyed fashion, councils Poles on some down home truths and urges people in that nation to accept the inevitable end of a...

As this article from the Romanian newspaper Romania Liberia shows once again – the divide between East and West Europe over President Obama’s decision to cancel the Bush-era missile shield couldn’t be starker. What West Europe regards as a reasoned and rational decision to bring Moscow more into the fold, Eastern Europe regards as naive if not betrayal. For Romania Liberia, Cristian Campeanu...

Newsmax has an article up today by one John Perry, predicting that the U.S. military will intervene to take over the Obama administration (via Talking Points Memo — h/t to njgruber in Comments for the permalink):

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, on a visit to Northrop Grumman’s Newport News shipyard yesterday, effectively said “Don’t worry over the quality of our submarines.” After visiting the submarine building facility at Newport News—one of only two shipyards in the nation to build nuclear-powered submarines— Mabus said during a brief news conference: “I’m absolutely comfortable with the quality...

One of the stories behind the story of the demise of the F-22 Raptor fighter is the “developing story” of the increasingly important role unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are playing in today’s and certainly in tomorrow’s Air Force. In my story behind the story of the F-22 demise, I quoted Fred Kaplan’s comments that, during the most intense period of the Cold War, “much higher...

The British tabloid The Daily Express is reporting that the Saudi government has told the head of British intelligence that it’s fine with them if Israel bombs an Iranian nuclear site.

UPDATE: According to MSNBC’s First Read, President Obama will be meeting with ALL the players in his Situation Room tomorrow (emphasis mine): Although President Obama has spent so much time and energy on domestic issues in his first nine months in office, last week’s news (Iran and its nuclear ambitions and missile tests, the future of Gitmo’s closure, and Gen. McChrystal’s troop request for Afghanistan)...

As we steadily approach January, by which time President Obama has promised to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, and as the Supreme Court, Congress and the nation continue to ponder appropriate outcomes, my latest interview in my series of interviews relevant to “the war on terror” (by my count, the 50th such interview) is with retired Army Reserve Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham, who has perhaps...

Having read two of Andrew J. Bacevich’s books now (The New American Militarism and The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism) I know that he is always worth reading, even when you don’t agree with his conclusions (although I mostly do).

As the cartoon above says, War is Big Business. This major issue is discussed, if at all, in passing by the mainstream media. Newspapers in India’s capital city had to borrow a news story from The Washington Post that “major US arms suppliers are wooing Indian defence agents and officials.” Emily Wax of The Washington Post continues: Almost every weekend, there are cocktails and closed-door...