Only Washington Is Clueless

Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com

In every aspect of human existence, change is a constant.  Yet change that actually matters occurs only rarely. Even then, except in retrospect, genuinely transformative change is difficult to identify.  By...

Cheap Grace at Fenway

Cross-posted from TomDispatch.com

Fenway Park, Boston, July 4, 2011.  On this warm summer day, the Red Sox will play the Toronto Blue Jays.  First come pre-game festivities, especially tailored for the occasion.  The ensuing spectacle -- a carefully scripted encounter...

On the Mend?
America Comes to Its Senses

At periodic intervals, the American body politic has shown a marked susceptibility to messianic fevers.  Whenever an especially acute attack occurs, a sort of delirium ensues, manifesting itself...

Crossposted with TomDispatch.com

It is a commonplace of American politics: When the moving van pulls up to the White House on Inauguration Day, it delivers not only a closetful of gray suits and power ties, but a boatload of expectations. 

A president, being the most powerful man in...

Crossposted from TomDispatch.com.

In defense circles, “cutting” the Pentagon budget has once again become a topic of conversation.  Americans should not confuse that talk with reality.  Any cuts exacted will at most reduce the rate of growth.  The essential facts remain: U.S. military outlays today equal that of...

Crossposted with TomDispatch.com.

In January 1863, President Abraham Lincoln’s charge to a newly-appointed commanding general was simplicity itself: “give us victories.”  President Barack Obama’s tacit charge to his generals amounts to this: give us conditions permitting a dignified withdrawal.  A pithy quote in Bob Woodward’s new book captures...

Crossposted with TomDispatch.com.

Once a serious journalist, the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward now makes a very fine living as chief gossip-monger of the governing class.  Early on in his career, along with Carl Bernstein, his partner at the time, Woodward confronted power.  Today, by relentlessly exalting Washington trivia, he flatters...

Originally posted at TomDispatch

Worldly ambition inhibits true learning. Ask me. I know. A young man in a hurry is nearly ineducable: He knows what he wants and where he’s headed; when it comes to looking back or entertaining heretical thoughts, he has neither the time nor the...

Crossposted with TomDispatch.com.

“In watching the flow of events over the past decade or so, it is hard to avoid the feeling that something very fundamental has happened in world history.”  This sentiment, introducing the essay that made Francis Fukuyama a household name, commands renewed attention today, albeit...

Crossposted with TomDispatch.com

Rewriting the Past by Adding In What's Been Left Out

In a recent column, the Washington Post's Richard Cohen wrote, "What Henry Luce called 'the American Century' is over." Cohen is right. All that remains is to drive a stake through the...

Reports in The New York Times have revealed the existence of a hitherto secret counterterrorism campaign conducted by U. S. troops in Pakistan, Syria, and other countries. The campaign reputedly dates from 2004 and has included nearly a dozen raids conducted by special operations forces that swoop into a target...

Cross-posted from www.TomDispatch.com

Even as the Bush presidency wears down, the Global War on Terror only expands. Perhaps the word should be "metastasizes." Just this week, the U.S. military, using SOFA-less Iraq as its launching pad, sent four helicopters with U.S. special forces soldiers across the Syrian border in...

In a recent exchange with a reporter, General David Petraeus volunteered the following:

You know, I made a private decision some years back when I was promoted to Major General that I was just going to stop voting. And I did that, again, not for public consumption, although it's...

"But even more important is that world view that I share with John McCain. That world view that says that America is a nation of exceptionalism. And we are to be that shining city on a hill, as President Reagan so beautifully said, that we are a beacon of hope...

In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Bush worked himself into a lather about the dangers of "retreating within our borders." His speech bulged with ominous references to ostensibly resurgent isolationists hankering to "tie our hands" and leave "an assaulted world to fend for itself." Turning inward,...

No one doubts the bravery of the American soldier when facing enemy fire. But do senior leaders possess moral courage equal to the physical courage of those they send into battle? The question, first posed during the Vietnam War, has recently reemerged. In Baghdad’s “Green Zone” and in Donald Rumsfeld’s...