On what we should learn from 11 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Our Pakistani Allies
In another demonstration of diplomatic silliness, the Pakistanis have convicted the doctor who helped us find Osama bin Laden of treason and sentenced him to 33 years in prison. This helps to clarify which side the Pakistanis are actually on. Hint: it’s not ours. I’ll have more about this in my print column tomorrow.
Iran Nuke Concession?
The New York Times is reporting that Iran may be about to open its Parchin military facility to international inspections. This is a biggish deal, but not a complete breakthrough. Parchin is where Iran may have been conducting experiments on weaponizing its nuclear fuel; there has been speculation that the facility housed a chamber to …
Obama’s Health Care Box
Alec MacGillis of the NewRepublic has been doing some fine campaign reporting this year and here he offers a smart look at what may be the most important state of all in November–Ohio. The most striking part of the piece for me, one that illuminates an essential conundrum for Barack Obama, occurs when MacGillis goes door to door with a …
Romney Stands Up
As the Jeremiah Wright ad campaign zooms into the dustbin of history, it must be noted that Mitt Romney promptly and firmly did the right thing. He denounced it:
“I want to make it very clear: I repudiate that effort,” Romney said at a news conference. “I think it’s the wrong course.. . . I hope that our campaigns can
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How to Close the Deficit (A Little)
My colleague Fareed Zakaria has a really smart column today about Germany’s role in the Greek debt crisis–and guess what? He’s not bashing the Germans for fiscal austerity. He’s praising them for the compassion they’ve shown, at a stiff cost to German taxpayers, to keep the Greeks afloat. For me, though, the most interesting thing about …
How Ugly? Really, Really Ugly
There’s a front-page story in the New York Times about the possibility that a right-wing super PAC will launch a racially charged attack against President Obama centering on his relationship with the dreadful Rev. Jeremiah Wright. This is the campaign that John McCain famously, and honorably, refused to launch in 2008. I suspect it …
Latest Column: The Nuke Negotiations
It looks like Iran is going to make a serious proposal at next week’s round of nuclear talks in Baghdad. But the true test for President Obama will be whether he can hold his coalition together to continue economic sanctions until the Iranians agree to the most important item on the agenda–intrusive inspections of Iranian facilities by …
Recalcitrant Romney
Mitt Romney is clearly a candidate terrified by his own mouth. What other explanation for his campaign’s extreme efforts to prevent reporters from asking him questions? I know that there isn’t much public sympathy for journalistic whining–including my own occasional, stupid laments–about the lack of access. But Romney’s staff has …
Bully Pulpit Second Thoughts
I fear that I went too easy on Mitt Romney with regard to his high school bullying escapades. It’s not the incident itself that troubles me — though it was, obviously, outrageous and disgraceful — so much as his current response: He doesn’t remember it. This is patent nonsense. How could he not remember it? Obviously he remembers it, …
The Bully Pulpit
Sometimes you feel an otherworldly–perhaps even divine–presence in the affairs of humankind. Today we have the astonishing juxtaposition of President Obama’s awkward, belated embrace of gay marriage, and the painful Washington Post story about Mitt Romney’s days as a bully at the ritzy Cranbrook School in Detroit. In the end, I …
Neoconned
The illustrious patriots over at the Commentary blog have, predictably, taken me to task for defending Peter Beinart’s fine book about the crisis in Israel. They have done so in a predictably specious way. So I’d like to make my position, and theirs, perfectly clear: the argument against West Bank settlements is not merely a demographic …
And, er, What About the Settlements?
The neoconservative assault on Peter Beinart’s fine book, The Crisis of Zionism, continues. It has taken many forms–ad hominem attacks usually and now, mocking his sales figures. Indeed, it has taken many forms but one: there still is no coherent response to Beinart’s argument that the West Bank settlement policy is a long-term …