War, no matter what anyone wants to tell you, is not a morality play, where one side is ever brave and virtuous, and the other ever sneering and evil. And, to amplify that point a little, we shouldn’t end up fighting World War III just because the Russian invasion of Ukraine is deeply immoral. The…
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War! What is it good for? Circulation!
Oh, yeah. There is nothing like a war—in particular, a good guys versus bad guys war—to pump up the circulation, to attract eyeballs—to cable talk shows, network news (OK, I haven’t actually seen one since, well, 2001, but I’m assured they still exist), websites, podcasts, videocasts, etc., etc. etc. I’m told they even have the…
Dan Drezner, last seen regressin’ to the mean like a motherf*cker
O rare Dan Drezner!1 Oy vey, Dan Drezner! Just last week I was falling all over myself with praise for Dan’s all too acute post The war in Ukraine is going badly for everyone, which Dan then followed up with another depressingly acute corker, What is the plan behind sanctioning Russia?, pointing out that the…
Moral, moral, who’s got a moral? Well, Daniel Drezner has one, and I think it’s depressingly accurate.
I so often disagree with Dan that I sometimes try to apologize for it, but his recent post, The war in Ukraine is going badly for everyone, is depressingly spot on. Dan ends his incisive piece with the following grim paragraphs: We have entered a new Cold War, which is not something I say lightly….
Thanks, Jen Psaki, for making me embarrassed to be a Democrat
I recently recommended that Ilya Shapiro, scheduled to become executive director of the Georgetown University Center for Constitutional Studies, be given a week or two, probably sans pay, to think over the advisability of the executive director of the Georgetown University Center for Constitutional Studies talkin’ smack every time a Democratic president makes a Supreme…
Who could have seen this coming? Drones, and the people who fly them, are stupid and heartless!
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…
Passive-aggressive hypocrisy hath made its masterpiece: The Volokh Conspiracy’s conspiracy against the rule of law
The Volokh Conspiracy is a website that describes itself as “Mostly law professors | Sometimes contrarian | Often libertarian | Always independent”. They forgot to add “Frequently Lukidist”. The eponymous founder of said conspiracy is Eugene Volokh. To call Gene’s c.v. “glittering” is probably the understatement of the decade. A bona fide mathematical genius, he…
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 and Jack refuted; Kagan expanded
Are Dan Drezner and Jack Shafer Brothers of the Asp? Because they certainly are Queens of Denial. Both Dan How scared should we be about 2024? and Jack Why the Fear of Trump May Be Overblown cast a cold eye if not cold water on Robert Kagan’s widely discussed and damn well verging on magisterial…