Donald Trump recounted the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in the following manner: He [Baghdadi] died after running into a dead-end tunnel, whimpering and crying and screaming. The compound had been cleared by this time, with people either surrendering or being shot and killed. Eleven young children were moved out of the house…
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The U.S. is betraying the Kurds? What else is new?
Donald Trump’s disastrous, incoherent withdrawal from Syria is, in all its disarray, entirely appropriate in one respect—it allows the conclusion of a disastrous misadventure to mirror its start, which was also disastrous and incoherent. (That’s enough “disastrous’s” for one sentence, don’t you think?) The plight of the Kurds, now left to the less than tender…
Donald Trump’s Syrian “policy”: At least it’s good for a laugh!
That seems to be the reaction of the great Dan Drezner over at the Washington Post. Ole Dan feels he just has to chuckle at the consternation of his “realist” colleagues, who find that you should be careful what you wish for, a problem, Dan tells us, for all foreign policy mavens. This [the consternation…
Dolchstosslegende at the Washington Post
Over at the American Conservative, Gil Barndollar, former Marine Corps officer and currently Military Fellow-in-Residence at the Catholic University of America’s Center for the Study of Statesmanship, has an excellent article on the modern American version of Dolchstosslegende (“dagger stab myth”)—the claim made by the German Right and immensely amplified by Adolf Hitler that Germany’s…
Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood: not entirely the all-out misogynistic gore-fest I had been expecting!
When Quentin Tarantino was a young man, he had dreams, as young men do. These are among the things that Quentin Tarantino dreamed: That he would kick Bruce Lee’s ass; That he would save Sharon Tate’s ass; That he would have a pitbull that would bite people on the ass (also the nuts); That he…
This just in: Stephen S. Fuller is a liar
WashPost reporter Dalton Bennett provides this item for the “Nothing to see here, folks. Move along, move along” file: A prominent Washington-area economist wrote an opinion piece welcoming the arrival of Amazon’s new headquarters in Northern Virginia at the suggestion of a company official who hoped to build public support for the project before a…
Daniel Drezner and the Darkening Detritus of Doom
A few months ago, WashPost columnist Daniel Drezner blossomed forth with a series of articles on the future lying before us whose tone was so gloomy that I may start wishing I won’t live long enough to see it. His biggest “big picture” picture appeared in Reason last April, titled “Will Today’s Global Trade Wars…
The four-star general with a two-star mind
Okay, that headline is more euphonious than accurate, not to say meaningful, so here’s the gist of what I’m trying to say: Politico has a story up by Eliana Johnson claiming that Donald Trump held off bombing Iran on the basis of comments on Fox News by retired four star Jack Keane, to wit: “Our…
Takes, short and not so short
Nancy Pelosi is invisible, says George F. Will In a not bad considering column, George F. Will urges congressional Democrats to “temper their enthusiasm for impeachment with lucidity”, listening to words of wisdom from others, including Greg Weiner, “Madison scholar par excellence” and author of a new book that Mr. Will has either read or…
Textualism refuted! Or Clarence Thomas lays an egg
A few posts back, I groused (loudly) over Justice Clarence Thomas’ majority opinion in FTB v. Hyatt, overturning a previous Supreme Court decision, Nevada v. Hall regarding the immunity of states from suit in other states’ courts. In rejecting Hall, the Court found that the Constitution not only grants states an inherent immunity to suits…