previously published at Demagogues and Dictators

Gen. Stanley McChrystal is ISAF Commander no longer -- at least that's what an unnamed TIME source is reporting.

If he hadn't resigned willingly, he should have been fired. If he resigned under pressure, he got off light. (For those of you...

Previously Published at Demagogues and Dictators

A few months back, we reported at Demagogues and Dictators on the crisis surrounding artillery barrages fired by North and South Korean forces into the highly contested maritime zone along the Northern Limit Line (NLL) in the Western Sea.

That escalation...

Previously published at Demagogues and Dictators

This week, US Forces withdrew from Afghanistan's Korengal Valley -- known more commonly to those who served there as "the valley of death". It is a story that has landed relatively quietly in the US media, and deserves much more...

UPDATE

I published this article here on HuffPo almost a year ago -- and the resounding backlash from the right wing (both fringe and otherwise) was resounding. Today, in the wake of the horrors at a Safeway in Arizona, makes me wonder -- was I so wrong?

My fear --...

Dear Texas Board of Education,

The state of Texas is one of our nation's largest -- and thus, is one of the largest buyers of textbooks. Therefore, the standards set by the Texas Board of Education may very well dictate the content of all textbooks available for the entire US...

In Marjah, the "Government in a Box" is about to deploy. It will be the moment of truth for General McChrystal and Hamid Karzai's battle strategy for Operation Moshtarak. The stakes are higher than simply the success of ISAF's COIN strategy in Marjah, and after Marjah comes Kandahar.

This past...

They have been preparing for this crisis since 1994. They have built a disciplined, equipped, determined force not of hundreds, not of thousands, but of tens of thousands. They are the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), and they are not alone. They stand with the United Wa State Army and the...

Yesterday, a bomb went off in a market in Thailand. Two Thai soldiers were wounded. That market had been fully swept, before the explosion, with the GT200 "bomb detector". Sharon Weinburger, a contributor for AOL News described the aftermath:

Two soldiers were wounded in the bomb...

This past Wednesday, an insane man flew an airplane into a building in Austin, TX. He intended to destroy the local offices of the IRS. He intended the crash to be bloody, terrifying, and attention getting. He intended his act to be "propaganda of the deed". He left us his...