W.J. Astore You read it here first: the fatal flaw in U.S. foreign policy is training wheels. Yes, those supplemental wheels you add to your child’s bike when she’s first trying to learn how to balance herself as she pedals. How so? Listen closely to America’s leaders as they talk about helping Iraqis, Afghans, and…
Daniel N. White I recently came across a most worthwhile book at the library: The Road to the Killing Fields: The Cambodian War of 1970-1975, by Wilfred P. Deac, published in 1997. There’s no shortage of books out there about the Vietnam War, but our satellite wars in Cambodia and Laos have gotten almost no…
W.J. Astore Reports that President Obama is considering even more troops and bases to fight ISIS in Iraq put me to mind of Roman general Publius Quinctilius Varus. Two millennia ago, Varus committed three Roman legions to the Teutoburg Forest in Germania in terrain that neutralized Roman advantages in firepower and maneuverability. Ambushed and caught…
Peter Van Buren (Let’s start our day with a little satire, courtesy of Peter Van Buren, whose site, WeMeantWell.com, is essential reading for anyone trying to understand the convoluted designs of U.S. foreign policy. Used by permission of the author.) April 27, 2015 It is widely reported that the U.S. would like to keep additional…
Michael Brenner Why bother with facts? That question threads its way through political discourse, through educational philosophy and through observations on the media. Rarely is it confronted squarely. For the lines between actual reality and virtual reality have been so blurred that the distinction itself no longer is generally recognized. The axiom that since I…
W.J. Astore Two Afghan stories this week suggest much about U.S. progress in winning hearts and minds there. The first involves Hamid Karzai. Afghanistan’s departing president, the “Mayor of Kabul,” Karzai asserted that “America did not want peace for Afghanistan, because it had its own agendas and goals here.” It’s easy to paint Karzai as…
W.J. Astore In April 2009, I wrote an article for TomDispatch.com recounting Mary McCarthy’s critique of the American experience in Vietnam, and how her lessons applied to President Obama’s “surge” in Afghanistan. A central lesson cited by McCarthy was the American desire never to be labeled a loser. That desire explains, at least in part,…
Michael Murry In 2008 Barack Obama was elected president in a wave of euphoria for “hope” and “change,” but he threw away his mandate during his first year in office when he did not liquidate Deputy Dubya’s dimwit debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan. He became a predictable mediocrity after that, his two terms of office…
W.J. Astore General John Allen wants to “destroy the Islamic State now.” So he says in an article for Defense One. Allen, a retired Marine Corps general who led troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, is currently a distinguished fellow at the Brookings Institution. But what is distinguishing him in this article is his crusader-speak, a…
Michael Murry As a veteran of the Nixon-Kissinger Fig Leaf Contingent (Vietnam 1970-72) I have always thought that the American slogan “Peace With Honor” had little to do with Peace and nothing to do with Honor. Over forty years later, witnessing the U.S. military floundering about in — and flailing away at — Afghanistan and…
The Contrary Perspective 