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Whenever I try to chart a course between the “Iraq would have been great if we’d just had smarter people in charge of the occupation” and the “Arabs can’t handle democracy” school of thought, I tend to come back to things like this — the great difficult [sic] Belgians have in creating a viable, legitimate binational [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
A few months ago, it was the received wisdom that Iraq was in the midst of a rapidly escalating civil war. That claim is no longer plausible. ~Michael Gerson Well, actually, that was the “received wisdom” of many people last summer as well. Rather than “rapidly escalating” now, the civil war has reached a plateau for [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
Fukuyama actually makes some sense about Russia: What the West needs to do is watch Russia’s actual behavior, and not project onto it the West’s own hopes and fears as occurred over the past fifteen years. Many Westerners are angry with Putin and the Russia he is creating in part because they are jilted lovers: [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
John Warner’s recent relatively outspoken stances on Iraq are evidently not the result of worries about his chances for re-election next year, as he has announced that he will not be running. As John Judis has noted, Virginia is a vulnerable seat for the GOP with a Warner retirement, and it is also a state that [...]
Filed under: politics
And the fact is that the neocon crowd that took far too easily the helm of the foreign policy establishment away from the realist and liberal internationalist players in this game are almost entirely responsible for the dramatic erosion of America’s national security portfolio. ~Steve Clemons Well, with the exception of rare figures such as Mr. [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
Strange but true: the Stars and Bars adorn this Pakistani fruit-seller’s stand (via Cliopatria). What’s Urdu for Deo Vindice?
Filed under: miscellaneous
The Wall Street Journal (yes, you read that correctly) has a story on Ron Paul’s presidential campaign, and it is surprisingly favourable.
Filed under: politics
As someone who was a fairly early critic of Maliki, I have to say that I have never had any confidence in his government as an effective U.S. ally, much less as a reliable quisling government. Even so, I have to acknowledge that Maliki was never going to achieve the things that Washington expected him to achieve, [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
The antiwar forces, the surge opponents, the “I was against it from the beginning” people are, some of them, indulging in grim, and mindless, triumphalism. They show a smirk of pleasure at bad news that has been brought by the other team. Some have a terrible quaking fear that something good might happen in Iraq, [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
Rumours continue to swirl about an attack on Iran before the year is out. Prof. Cole points to this Barnett Rubin item, this author was told by U.S. intelligence sources that his forthcoming book on Iran might be made obsolete by an attack before 2008, and there has been talk that Rove timed his departure to [...]
Filed under: foreign policy, politics