George Will & Iraq
Looks like George Will wants to leave Iraq, too. I’m not convinced we can achieve much of anything there or in Afghanistan. But this “break it you buy it” ethic keeps coming back to...
Tagged: Iraq
Yes, facts do change minds
I have my own reservations about George Will’s column on Afghanistan, but accusing Will of slavishly following public opinion is just silly. The argument – such as it is – seems to be that...
Thoughts on the Renewed Violence in Iraq
Steve Hynd over at Newshoggers has a very sharp post comparing aspects of the Afghanistan and Iraqi missions. Worth the read. I’m not quite sure about this: But whatever the root causes, the Iraqi...
Selling Out
Byron York’s column on the decline and fall of the antiwar Left makes for a depressing read.
Iraq June 30th
Tomorrow is the deadline for the exit of US Forces from the cities in Iraq, as per the details of the Status of Forces Agreement between the (then) Bush and Maliki governments. Peter Feaver,...
freedom and neoconservatism
“Iran’s green awakening may end awfully. But if it succeeds, it will be everything the neocons had hoped to achieve in Iraq – and also a demonstration of neoconservatism’s core fallacy, which is that...
it doesn’t matter how horrific they are…
Obama needs to release the photos, even if they do show pictures of the rape of detainees. Indeed, that makes it all the more necessary.
Where We Fight
Sonny Bunch responds to my earlier post, arguing that overseas military operations divert potential terrorists from domestic attacks. I think this is pretty unpersuasive: 1.) The most spectacular terrorist attack ever carried out -September...
Flip a COIN
With the apparent (and horrifically bloody) demise of the Tamil Tigers it’s worth I think reviewing the context of this whole counterinsurgency debate. Basically as Nir Rosen says there are two schools of counterinsurgency....
Not Knowing the Meaning of Words: Special Diplomacy Edition
Christian Brose writing at the Shadow Gov’t on the ForeignPolicy blogroll: Is negotiating akin to appeasement? No, not inherently, but as with everything, the devil’s in the details. Diplomacy is not just a synonym for...
Economic Interventionism
Mark raises an interesting point: Finally, I’d put an end to the concept of economic or diplomatic sanctions as a meaningful manner of achieving most diplomatic ends (the exception being targeted sanctions solely intended to...
The Humanitarian Empire
Scott wonders again whether there isn’t a place for humanitarian intervention, or a sort of anti-imperialist version, and asks if perhaps the problem is not so much the idea behind such a foreign policy,...
Intervening into the Unknown/The Unknown Intervening into US
To recap a bit where we are in this discussion. So I would say Freddie and ED (to a degree) subscribe roughly to what I call the Radiohead Theory of Foreign Policy: i.e. the...
Idealism with a Sword
Scott, remarking on the improving conditions in Iraq, asks: If this is a trend that continues and increasingly results in a lowering of violence that both adds to the stability of Iraq and enables...
