Michael Levenson, writing an “overview” of a major investigation into the U.S. “drone war” in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria conducted by the New York Times, reports: Drawing on more than 1,300 documents from a hidden Pentagon archive, the investigation reveals that, since 2014, the American air war has been plagued by deeply flawed intelligence, rushed…
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Hey, hey, President Biden! How many kids did you kill today? Well, not many, as it turns out.
Yes, shocking news reported by The Week’s Ryan Cooper: Joe Biden is a good guy! Who’s all but halted the “blind man’s bluff” approach to targeting “bad guys” and anyone standing next to them initiated by President Barack Obama and heavily juiced by his successor, Donald Trump. Cooper explains how the supposedly fool-proof mechanisms developed…
Samantha Power’s narrow tailoring becomes increasingly unraveled
You may not remember, though I obviously do, the language that Samantha Power, then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, used to try to sell the American people on President Obama’s “plan” to use military force to persuade Syrian President Bashar Hafez al-Assad to behave himself: On the one hand, we Americans share a desire,…
Colin Powell, a four-star disappointment
The death of Colin Powell at age 84 has brought forth lots of eulogies and a few accurate criticisms, like this one, posted at Forever Wars by Spencer Ackerman, author of Reign of Terror How The 9/11 Era Destabilized America And Produced Trump. Ackerman focuses almost exclusively on what one might call the “mysterious incident…
Political Notes from All Over
George F. Will, critical race theorist par excellance There was a time when I made a virtual albeit entirely unpaid cottage industry out of making fun of George F. Will, working up such labored funnies as Two-parent families iz da bomb, says Ramblin’ George Will, snickering at the twice married, frequently adulterous when married and…
Dan Drezner does my job for me. And does it better! Sometimes!
Yeah, that’s right. “Terrible Dan Drezner”, as I often call him—or, sometimes, illiterate Daniel Drezner—has been doing my job—bashing “the Blob” on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and trashing the hawks/neocons on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Okay, neither my nor Dan’s schedule has been that tight, but, still, he has been working hard. One of my principal…
In 1997 General McMaster wrote an excellent book about Vietnam, “Dereliction of Duty”. That should be the title of his autobiography as well.
Lieutenant General (three-star) H. R. McMaster, former national security advisor to Donald Trump, among other crimes, has been all over the airwaves recently, denouncing (of course) President Biden for having the courage to pull the plug on a 20-year farce—albeit one written in the blood of the innocents—known as the Afghan “War”—one of the very…
Shorter Kevin Drum: The Real Source of America’s Rising Rage? Fox News!
Okay, I just saved you about 4,000 words, the approximate length of El Kevbo’s recent meganalysis of the American mood, appearing in Mother Jones, The Real Source of America’s Rising Rage, which has been getting some semi-approving nods around the internet. “I’ve been spending considerable time digging into the source of our collective rage,” Kevie…
Daniel Larison reads the Washington Post editorial page so I don’t have to. Fred Kaplan has to ask, what’s it all about, anyway?
And thank God that Dan does read the Post for me, because if I did have to read it myself I’d have the shakes even worse than I’ve got ‘em now. In his excellent substack site Eunomia, Dan alerted me to the Post’s most recent eruption, taking them to task in his post China Hawks…
America’s latest “Forever War” not finding too many recruits
I have frequently—frequently—and loudly—loudly—complained about the compulsion of America’s foreign policy “Blob” to find a replacement for everyone’s favorite multi-trillion-dollar arms race, the late great Cold War, centering, of course, on China, but eagerly tossing in Iran, Russia, and even Venezuela, for good measure. The problem is, not everyone seems to be as afraid of…