Lionel Beehner

In the summer of 2008, when Russian tanks rolled into Georgia, Americans took a timeout from watching the Olympics to express their collective outrage. John McCain boldly declared, "We are all Georgians," even dispatching his wife to Tbilisi to investigate. Yet when Syria's regime brutally slaughters thousands of its own...

Is it worse to be uninformed or misinformed? That is the question regarding Invisible Children's Kony 2012 video that went viral and ended up making Joseph Kony a household name in Hollywood and Middle America. It's been watched by over 70 million viewers. Not bad for a tiny NGO in...

The fall of 1991 I came down from the Urals, exhausted but also exhilarated from the alpine hike. I walked into a Russian village at the foothills. The villagers right away could see something was wrong. Upon seeing my visage, I was declared extremely ill. One bear of a villager,...

It's unbelievable, really. The US military is holding up Iraq as a model for Afghanistan. They'll tell you it took a few years to get right but by golly, Iraq is at peace with itself, with a large armed forces, a democratically elected government, and commerce flourishing. Let's replicate that...

To those who thought Obama would end all war, wipe out global poverty, save the environment, and eradicate terrorism in one fell swoop, they will be sadly disappointed by this earthling-like leader of the free world's slacker performance.

But Obama's foreign policy has not been half bad. He has...

Moammar Gadhafi droned on for 90 minutes yesterday in rambling prose barely befitting a head of state. Later up to the lectern was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who also gave long-winded remarks that wandered from topic to topic, desperately searching for a point. Mikhail Gorbachev was infamous for his preachiness. And Cuba's...

At least when George W. Bush goofed off, he was seen busily clearing brush or running on a treadmill. His successor takes in a fancy West Village meal followed by a Broadway show. There is nothing wrong with a night on the town now and then but Obama seems to...

Maureen Dowd plagiarized. Goodness gracious, let's take her out back to the woodshed and make her repent.

Wait, let's not. We all plagiarize. I've read now a half dozen articles about Dowd's plagiarism. Every one of them mentioned the irony of how Dowd exposed Biden's plagiarism way back when,...

Obama has had a remarkably productive first 100 days on the foreign policy front. He has sought to rebuild fractured alliances, toss out bad acronyms (GWOT, among others), and restore America's tattered image abroad, even if it means having grip-and-grin sessions with adversaries. It's hard not to like what I...

Hmm, Obama says he'll shake hands with autocrats if they unclench their fists. Trouble is the new president's hands, like those of his predecessor, are already stained with blood. A series of American unmanned predator drones has reportedly killed a few dozen Pakistanis.

When pressed on the issue, his normally...

There is rejoicing that William Kristol was given a pink slip from the Grey Lady. After all, his columns read like they were written by a Weekly Standard copy boy, not a distinguished opinion-maker. But there are more and more murmurs percolating online that Thomas Friedman's column should get the...

Hand it to Hillary Clinton. She's managed to sum up the bold new direction of US foreign policy into a bumper-friendly catchphrase: smart power. Sufficiently vague, the phrase is remarkable for its meaninglessness. Ostensibly it combines "hard" with "soft" power, a win-win policy that will wow the pants off the...

When asked by Martin Scorsese to tone down his mobster character in The Departed, Jack Nicholson is said to have told the director, "I don't do subtle." The same could be said for Israel and Russia, which both find themselves in the familiar position of being accused of bullying their...

Once again Israel is under fire for using disproportionate force in response to Hamas rocket fire from Gaza. Israeli bombs have left hundreds of Palestinians dead, the bulk of them Hamas militants but dozens of citizens have died as well. So is Israel justified in its retaliation or did it...

Pardon the metaphor, but Obama is trying to put lipstick on the pig that is US foreign policy. His national security team looks no less hawkish than the team assembled during Bush's second term. If I may ask, how is Hillary Clinton signing a communiqué or Robert Gates asking for...

I am baffled by Randy Scheunemann's weird infatuation with Sarah Palin. Was it her winking that won over the bearded neo-con? Her utter lack of curiosity about foreign affairs, which probably could earn her an endowed chair at a right-wing think tank?

His efforts to cosset the vice presidential...

Over munchies at Obama headquarters in downtown Cleveland, shouts of "Yes, we did!" broke out among the ballroom of supporters. The chant was supposed to be a past simple version of Obama's campaign slogan --"Yes, we can!" -- made famous for energizing supporters in the present tense with an optimistic...

Political candidates across this great country of ours, I ask you -- nay, I beg you: Can you please put a moratorium on the words "Main Street" and "Wall Street" in the same sentence? I know it won't be easy (Gosh, I even enjoyed writing that last line). Surely the...

So if Barack Obama cavorts with terrorists (Bill Ayers) and John McCain runs around with lobbyists (Charles Keating), why bother vote -- since both candidates will bring Armageddon to the American Dream as we know it?

That is the feeling among a wide swath of the undecided electorate, who...

My living room, like many I imagine, fell silent after last Friday's presidential debate ticked to a close. The question on everyone's mind: Why had Obama not delivered the knock-out punch?

Here's my take, even though it pains me to say it: On foreign policy, Obama appears to have no...