IMMEDIATE RELEASE No. 1002-09 December 24, 2009 DoD Identifies Marine Casualty The Department of Defense announced today the death of a Marine who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. Lance Cpl. Omar G. Roebuck, 23, of Moreno Valley, Calif., died Dec. 22, as a result of a non-hostile incident in Helmand province, Afghanistan. He was assigned [...]

In the course of clucking his teeth at me despite not substantively disagreeing, Matthew Yglesias writes something very precise that hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves: The idea is to strengthen the Karzai government and deal the Taliban some military defeats in order to shift the incentives and make Taliban members or affiliates interested in [...]

That’s me, reading these Michael Cohen quotes to Noah Shachtman: “If there is one constant in population-centric COIN it is the element of violence and coercion against a civilian population,” e-mails the New America Foundation’s Michael Cohen, using the military acronym for counterinsurgency. “Certainly, that was the case in Malaya, Algeria, Kenya and Vietnam — [...]

Honesty was an intel officer’s first mistake when she directed CIA analysis during the first Bush term. I’ve had a mini-crusade against Miscik for years now, and I’m happy to see that one of my posts pops up when you Google her name. (Why? This is why.) Anyway, Miscik is getting a sinecure on a [...]

Read this Dave Weigel post. Every word of it. Anyone who snootily preens that the divide between real and fake journalism is an online/MSM divide is about to have their air force blown up on the tarmac like it was 1967.

The American Prospect runs this back-of-the-book feature where writers talk about the books that influenced their politics, and editor Mark Schmitt asked me to contribute. So I wrote about by the book that most influenced the way I think about foreign policy — by far — which is Samantha Power’s masterpiece, “A Problem From Hell”: [...]

Yes, I wrote a listicle. I did I did. It’s that time of year. And the Washington Independent even published it as a slide show. C’mon, click through. I’ll bet you didn’t think Michael McFaul was going to make my listicle! While we’re at it, listicle sounds like quite the dirty word, doesn’t it? I’ll [...]

On first blush, it seems like Charlie Savage’s New York Times piece about Guantanamo staying open until at least 2011 (an estimate, but a sensible one) is, you know, Bad News. But. Consider how this is going to work. The reason why GTMO might stay open through 2011, Charlie reports, is because Congress is balking [...]

IMMEDIATE RELEASE No. 997-09 December 22, 2009 DOD Identifies Army Casualty The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. Sgt. Albert D. Ware, 27, of Chicago, Ill., died Dec. 18 in Arghandab River Valley, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his vehicle with an [...]

The Awl is running a series on the end of the 00s, and I took the opportunity to think through how much I hated this decade, why I hated it, and why I fear it’s pernicious to believe that the historical balance magically zeroes on January 1. My entrance into these questions? The gift shop [...]