America’s allies are growing restless, David Ignatius warns. “Is President Obama an American version of Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader whose well-intentioned reforms led to the demise of his country’s global power? That’s the anxiety a traveler hears these days from worried U.S. allies, and it’s mirrored in a provocative new article.” Which American allies are…
Search Results for: DAVID IGNATIUS
David Ignatius, in search of a lead, yet fleeing the truth
“Listening to members of Congress, you might think the biggest problem at the Central Intelligence Agency is that one of its officers destroyed videotapes that showed waterboarding of suspected al-Qaeda operatives.” Really? Which ones have been saying such wickedness? And why isn’t destroying evidence of torture, you know, just a bit of a problem? Yes,…
The Afghan War Was So Bad, It’s Giving Mindless Interventionism A Bad Name! Go Figure!
Is Satan breaking out his ice skates? He damn well ought to be, because David “Never Met a War I Didn’t Want Someone Else to Fight” Ignatius is—wait for it—admitting that he was—wait for it, goddamn it, wait for it!—wrong about U.S. intervention in Afghanistan! The structure of the Kabul government has been rotting from…
Old Man War Machine, he jes’ keep rollin’ along
(Editor’s Note: I wrote this piece to describe the military intellectual complex’s endless search for a new Cold War. But Donald Trump seems to be looking for a hot one.) The Washington Post’s recent release of the “Afghanistan Papers”, which reported at least a significant portion of the near-infinite number of lies told to justify…
Donald Trump is destroying the U.S. military. Republicans don’t care.
Former Navy Secretary Richard Spencer wrote in his resignation letter to President Trump the following: The rule of law is what sets us apart from our adversaries. Good order and discipline is what has enabled our victory against foreign tyranny time and again, from Captain Lawrence’s famous order ‘Don’t Give up the Ship,’ to the…
Dirty Chinese try to prevent the U.S. from spying on them
Jerry Chun Shing Lee, a former case officer with the CIA, pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide intelligence information to the Chinese government. He did not admit to actually providing information. You can read about the case in this story from the New York Times by Julien E. Barnes. According to Barnes, Lee’s case “highlighted…
Paging Dr. Yeats! Paging Dr. Yeats!
Some time ago, I got so tired of reading about things “slouching towards Bethlehem”, or at least slouching somewheres, that I took upon myself to announce that no one, with the exception of Huckleberry Finn, would be allowed to use that verb, at once so affectedly literary and so uncouth that the poor word was…
I cannot keep silent! Part Deux
This not talking shit is hard! Yesterday, I couldn’t/wouldn’t keep silent about some year-old bullshit from David Ignatius. Well, today it’s the National Review’s Rich Lowry, opining about General Trump’s plans to reignite the war in Afghanistan: “At the end of the day, this is Trump concluding that he doesn’t want to lose a war…
I cannot keep silent!
A whole week ago I swore off blogging for a couple of weeks in order to engage in some “deep thought”, which I totally have been doing, remarking that I hoped our president would not blow up the world while I did so. Well, Sir Donald isn’t blowing up the world, because he’s so preoccupied…
Yo, Paleoliberals! You can’t go home again! (not really)
David Ignatius reports that Charles Peters, long-time editor of the Washington Monthly and, not incidentally, one-time mentor/editor to David, has the solution to the Democrats’ electoral woes, presented in his new book We Do Our Part. In writing the book, Charlie gets in line behind paleolibs Thomas “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” Frank and Michael…