Yes, you read that right: Donald Trump is trying to do something right. Not only is he trying to take a staggering 2,500 troops out of Iraq, he’s trying to take a staggering 2,500 troops out of Afghanistan as well! Effectively ending America’s only official shooting war! Almost as if we weren’t, you know, in…
Search Results for: WAR IN AFGHANISTAN
Twilight of Democracy: Anne Applebaum’s front-row seat to disaster
I have already written with great approval of Anne Applebaum’s recent article for the Atlantic, History Will Judge the Complicit, while snickering at Ramesh Ponnuru’s anguished protest—for surely the dude protested too much—that he was totally not—repeat not—“complicit”. He’s just friends with people who, it so happens, are complicit”.1 Which is like a totally different…
Shorter Dick: Do as I say, not as I did
Or, maybe, do as I did, not as I say. Or even, do as I say, not as Reagan did. You may have heard that our former veep, Ragin’ Dick Cheney, ripped our current veep, Mild Mike Pence, a new one over the Trump Administration’s less than rumbustious foreign policy. Money quote (or money shot)…
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Articles of Lasting Interest: Jazz: I post a jazz video every week, usually but not necessarily featuring a performance of a composition of Thelonious Monk. These videos can be accessed as a group here. “Harvard douchebaggery not exclusively a left-wing phenomenon, study reveals” is an unfriendly take on Harvard Professor Robert Barro’s disingenuous claim that…
Watch Jonah Goldberg morph into Donald Trump
Yes, it’s taken awhile. National Review conservatives like Jonah Goldberg were repelled by Donald Trump’s vicious nativism, his embrace of those good people who shout “Jews, you will not replace us”, plus all his wild talk about how we shouldn’t be in Afghanistan and that he always thought the invasion of Iraq was a bad…
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…
Orlando explained! Well, sort of.
Over at Bloomberg, Pankaj Mishra gives a nice take on “The Messy Mind of Omar Mateen”, noting that, among other things, “Mateen was mentally unstable, according to his divorced first wife. His Afghan-born father spoke of his son’s hatred of gays. Obama confirmed that the Islamic State had not directed the attack even though Mateen…
The foreign policy debate: Wouldn’t it be nice if we had one?
I realize that the recent terrorist attack in San Bernardino may forbid rational discussion of any topic for the next six months, or even longer. Still, wouldn’t be nice to have foreign policy discussion that consisted of more than a choice between Tweedle-Dick and Tweedle-Hillary? I mean, I’m not asking for six degrees of separation,…
Robert Samuelson, idiot
I have been in the past quite complimentary of Wash Post columnist Robert Samuelson. Well, I can’t take it all back because Bob often gets it right. But in this wretched post, “Defunding defense,” Bob gets it grossly and gratuitously wrong. It’s the “gratuitously” part that I can’t forgive, although the “grossly” part is, in…
Fred Kaplan: Getting Gates right
I’ve taken out some, though only some, of my many frustrations over our bloody and pointless war in Afghanistan by frequently ridiculing the columns of Fred Kaplan on the war. Writing for Slate, Kaplan, who has a lot of experience with foreign affairs, slowly metamorphosed from Afghan cheer leader to cautious skeptic to outright disbeliever…