Not as a bellicose document; something the Obama administration acted upon; and, yes, a method to concentrate international attention on current weaknesses in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. All will be explained if you follow this link to the Washington Independent. The New York Times cleans up after itself here. Putting “The Battle of Hampton Roads” [...]

Here I was, with my sentimental peace-processor heart, encouraged by the floated plan for President Obama to put forward a U.S. plan to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by midwifing a Palestinian state. Marc Lynch, in a post I somehow missed a week ago, has some pragmatic objections: Presidential intervention is a precious asset, to be [...]

Saw Titus Andronicus play at St. Stephens on Friday night. Easily the best show I’ve seen so far in 2010. Passion, ethics, vision. Anthems for your identification and for your sloganeering. Accordingly, I saw the young and the old screaming out lyrics to songs from The Monitor that have been available for barely a month. (It’s [...]

It’s John Quincy Adams in a box.

I’m not a big fan of speculation about Who Leaked What And Why, because we’re so rarely in a position to actually know. A more fruitful enterprise is to speculate on likely effects. So it is with Secretary Gates’s January memo about lacuna in U.S. strategy toward Iranian advances in uranium enrichment. Look at what [...]

Am I crazy or do prosecutors appear to be indicting these guys in the hope of getting testimony against higher-level Blackwater officials? And what does CIA and State think of the Justice Department going against the company?

Much as I have a certain verse of “The Takeover” in my ears, let me try to lower the temperature on Michael Cohen and hopefully clear up some misconceptions. He takes exception to my rejection of the COIN-as-kinder-gentler-war strawman and writes: Perhaps no one has ever used the specific term “kinder and gentler” before my [...]

This lends itself to a thousand unfortunate metaphors: Israel this week has been blocking travelers from bringing Apple Inc.’s new iPad into the country saying the device’s wireless technology threatens to create interference with other products, a move that has puzzled people both in Israel and Silicon Valley. The Ministry of Communications said the ban [...]

What the fuck dude. I believe HR called this an example of Positive Mental Attitude.

Crazy wild-eyed speculation: Harold Koh is so into drone strikes and assassinations because he doesn’t want the Obama administration to set up a new GTMO-esque indefinite detention facility. I know, right? The international community won’t tolerate a Negative-Zone version of Guantanamo Bay. But it’s pretty intuitively clear that the international community doesn’t give a shit [...]