I didn’t really follow the Obama China trip, but it did seem strange to me that the president went to China without even the apparent desire to yield a substantive policy achievement. Still, James Fallows has been arguing at great length that there were a number of small policy successes, and Matthew Yglesias co-signs for [...]

Justin Elliott reports: A federal criminal investigation has touched two House Dems, and another three, along with two Republicans, are under scrutiny by a pair of congressional ethics panels in matters related to the defunct lobbying firm, PMA Group. The investigation appears to have two focal points, according to reports: that PMA may have funneled [...]

I got a little worked up after Ft. Hood at the suggestion, raised by some on the right, that “political correctness” inhibits the God-given right of American Jews or Christians to inflict collective punishment on American Muslims for Nidal Malik Hasan’s crimes. Screening American Muslims in the military is a particularly insulting proposal. But it [...]

Obama will announce the revised Afghanistan strategy next Tuesday at West Point. I consider it the right optic: looking the cadets in the face and telling them why he’s escalating the war — a war the cadets will fight as very green officers — and how he intends to bring it to a just conclusion. [...]

My friend Judah Grunstein of World Politics Review sent me a thoughtful email on my Demand-Side Security post, and so with his permission, I’m publishing them here. In some ways, there’s already been a bit of COIN integrated into domestic policing since at least the mid- to late-nineties. I worked on the social work side [...]

One of the best things about blogging reminds me — and I may have made this point in an old post; I write a lot and can’t always remember what I said — of Bill Florio’s approach to punk rock. In some old MRR column, Bill described how when his bands get boring, he’d break [...]

Earlier this year, I had dinner with a smart defense wonk who had a few minor doubts about the ability of the Obama national-security team to successfully execute the new administration’s apparent agenda. One official the wonk didn’t doubt was Phil Carter, the Army reserve captain, lawyer and Obamanaut whom the administration made its Pentagon [...]

The world is conspiring to destroy any vestige of respect I have for Barry McCaffrey. Last year, the New York Times published a massive story about how McCaffrey shilled on cable news repeatedly for the interests of defense corporations that keep him on the payroll without disclosing any ties to corporations like DynCorp. Now, MediaMatters [...]

In a pre-Thanksgiving center-plate bounty, Vegetius writes with elegance and precision over at Small Wars Journal that it’s time to liberate COIN theory from the “hearts and minds” misunderstanding: Hearts and Minds is a wonderful name for a teen romance novel, but I’ve always thought it to be a poor name for a counterinsurgency concept. [...]

Nathan Hodge provides a good critique of my post last week about applying counterinsurgency principles to crime prevention. It’s a good opportunity for a second bite of the apple here. A number of good points here from Nathan and his sources. The one I found most compelling — which is to say I really ought [...]