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Ahead of Obama’s Iraq speech, Kelley Vlahos looks at what one of the country’s leading clerics has been up to while out of the media glare: Muqtada al Sadr, once dismissed by Washington neoconservatives as a desperate, washed-up five-cent firebrand, is now an Iranian-supported kingmaker who will not only help determine the next government and [...]
Wow, I can’t think of any better example of how we are a “nation at war” but completely don’t act like it than Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s address at the Brookings Institution today, unveiling the administration’s new National Security Strategy, which is, at it’s heart, a fairly pedestrian, idealized patchwork of global do-gooding, terrorist [...]
Filed under: Foreign policy, Iraq, War, World
When The Washington Post revealed in 2007 the disgusting conditions endured by injured soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital, the right wing blogosphere raced to blame the messenger and throw water on the outrage. Then, silence. There have been similar right wing blackouts on veteran/soldier suicides, health impacts from the burn pits overseas, and [...]
If the U.S spent the last year waving goodbye to Iraq in the rear-view, there certainly wasn’t much of a reckoning for the rotten and ultimately counterproductive abuse private security guards visited upon innocent Iraqis throughout the course of the seven- year war there. Nothing symbolizes this more than the New Year’s dismissal of murder [...]
I swear my heart skipped a beat when I saw this. The tentative smile of a seemingly typical 11-year-old boy — he could have been any boy in American suburbia, stopping briefly for the perfunctory photo-op in his soccer gear and trophy. But this was not normal — the caption underneath goes on to explain [...]
It shouldn’t be surprising that just a few months after hearing that the Obama Administration might not be able to fulfill its hopes for a “civilian surge” in Afghanistan due to a lack of interested/experienced American personnel, we now hear of Drug Enforcement Agency pilots being coerced — some say forcibly and illegally — into [...]
Filed under: Economics, Foreign policy, Iraq, War
There was a moment when it seemed the swollen Washington crowd attending the annual meeting of the Center for a New American Security might get so pumped up by its own mission of salvation for the broader Middle East and Central Asia that it could take off like a rocket ship of its own self-satisfaction [...]
Filed under: Iraq, Uncategorized, War
For all of you keeping score at home, Neocon Central has now decided that being a Wilsonian is a bad thing. When they were running the show at 1600 Penn, global democracy was a noble and necessary pursuit. Those who questioned its plausibility were defeatists—unpatriotic ingrowns refusing to acknowledge America’s exceptional status. But at the [...]
Filed under: Foreign policy, Iraq
I had always revered Rolling Thunder — the romantic vision of a Band of Brothers, refugees from a South Asian hellhole whose common experience, really, was the only thing separating them from a certain reckless breed of motorcycle gang. Their annual sojourn to the National Mall for Memorial Day, emblazoned in leather with the simple [...]
Filed under: Iraq, Politics, Uncategorized, War
That Doug Feith, eh? You almost have to admire his chutzpah. Having played such a large part in completely wrecking Iraq, he has an article in today’s Wall Street Journal laying out his new plan for world Utopia. The big idea is the aggrandizement of the Civilian Response Corps “so the president can mobilize trained [...]
Filed under: Iraq, Uncategorized, War