The Democrats’ strategy of focusing the debate on who the leader of the Republican Party is working, at least in the media. Sadly, the media has taken this question seriously. To their credit, the House Republican leadership team of John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Mike Pence haven’t taken ...

What an inspirational lecture by an American officer, apparently motivated by the need to discipline the occupied third-worlders he has the (white man's) burden of protecting. They should be thankful for his interventions, which have been in the interest of the Iraqi people. He should be listened to...

The Washington Post , February 21, 2009: "‘We pretty much know what they are going to say’ on human rights issues such as greater freedoms for Tibet, [Secretary of State Hillary] Clinton told reporters traveling with her on a tour of Asia. ‘We have to continue to press them. But our press...

Glenn Greenwald links to this important commentary by Roger Cohen, about the necessity of evolving and maturing our approach to the Israel/Palestine conflict. I want to highlight three keys: Like Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah has long been treated by the United States as a proscribed terrorist group. Thi...

President Obama's foreign policy team has been working hard to present its policies to the world as constituting a radical break from the Bush years. In the broadest sense, this has been absurdly easy: Obama had the world at hello....

New York Times - By Helene Cooper, Sheryl Gay Stolberg - Mar. 08 (News Report) - President Obama declared in an interview that the United States was not winning the war in Afghanistan and opened the door to a reconciliation process in which the American military would reach out to moderate elements ...

Martin Kramer is a “fellow” of the usual assortment of right-wing full-employment societies (Olin Institute, etc.). He suffers from a textbook case of Conservative Reading Comprehension Disorder. Right now he’s all het up because he’s got the goods on “Chas Freeman̶...

Erik starts off this week's discussion of From Colony to Superpower. Chapter XIII covers the years between 1942 and 1945, which involved a rather significant expansion of the global profile of the United States. Herring talks a bit about the debate that surrounded the decision to pursue the "Germany...

Hat tip: The Daily Dish I've been reading about the case of Chas Freeman, who has been nominated for National Intellgence Council Chief. Seems as if Mr. Freeman has been targeted by the Israeli Lobby for being, agasp, a person not falling in line with everything pro-Israel. Mr. Freeman from a speech...

The one right stance of the Bush administration was that it played tough with North Korea, one of the craziest and looniest countries in the world, behind Saudi of course. Like everything else the Bush administration did, they failed in that, too. North Korea easily played the six-party talks, givin...