Matt Yglesias writes one invaluable post today.
I fear that liberals and progressives are taking the wrong lesson from the Kerry loss. The problem wasn’t that Democrats chose a strategy based on expectations of the general election, it was that in this instance the choice was a poor one (admittedly in a tough field), short-circuited even […]
Justin Logan excerpts Joseph Biden’s questioning on the non-negotiations with North Korea over nuclear weapons. He’s right, Biden is great here. My favorite part:
I don’t for a moment countenance their human rights violations or support of terror, and the rest. But let me tell you, my dad before he died used to say, "Son, […]
Matt Yglesias points to an article in the Hill revealing the GOP’s prime legislative agenda for this summer.
In an e-mail sent to GOP aides and lobbyists late last week, House Majority Whip Roy Blunt’s (R-Mo.) office outlined its list of “priority legislation” on the post-Memorial Day calendar. The list includes gun-manufacturer liability, postal reform […]
I don’t have a detailed tally of the international coverage and commentary of the major US dailies. But it seems that the American press has been strangely uninterested in one of the biggest stories facing Europe in a long time: the expansion of the EU to include the former Soviet Bloc nations (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, […]
I’ve been pretty silent during the entire Richard Clarke affair and now the appearance of Condoleezza Rice before the 9/11 commission. It’s been pretty dramatic as political stories go - and one in which the more melodramatic developments and partisan rancor are completely unseparable from real, substantial issues of American foreign policy - its past […]
One of the biggest dislocations I experienced last week was not being able to follow the developments in Madrid and Spain in general more closely. The multiple bombing was horrendous, the sort of atrocity that makes one pause and think about the fragility of civilized life. The immediacy of local politics managed to dominate the […]
From yesterday’s Financial Times, Jeffrey Sachs offers a blustering indictment of the Bush administration’s approach to the crisis in Haiti. Not only has the US seemed to be bumbling in its reaction to an ever changing situation on the ground there, but it in fact is responsible for the rebellion by signalling to the opposition […]
One of the big stories of the week has been a “must-read” speech by Zbigniew Brzezinski critiquing the Bush administration’s foriegn policy in the Middle East and blasting unilateralism in general. It really is a marvelous speech, clearly and eloquently laying out one by one its faults. One part I especially liked:
Since the tragedy of […]
TAPPED has links to a number of liberal takes on the second anniversary of 9/11. Some of them are excellent. Fred Kaplan’s piece in Slate laments the consistently missed opportunities to respond to the Twin Towers attack with a renewed sense of international purpose and unity.
Remember? The French newspaper Le Monde, never one for trans-Atlantic […]
Dan Kennedy has an interesting post today taking the Globe’s ombudsman to task for refusing to apply to word “terrorist” to organizations like Hamas.
[S]he quotes Globe editor Martin Baron as saying, “The overall approach here is to describe events and present facts rather than to attack labels to individuals or groups. We particularly seek […]
I have admired and agreed with just about every analysis and commentary piece Josh Marshall has written, but I have to take issue with his latest thesis, that the neocon ideological rigidity in foreign policy is equivalent to the intellectual rigidity of French post-structuralism and post-Marxism and that both are equally dangerous. My issue certainly […]
Brian Whittaker pulls through with a good discussion of the anti-Shiite car bombing:
The killing of Ayatollah Hakim, the country’s most prominent Shia cleric, has been likened to murdering the Pope, but it’s more serious than that because popes these days have little real influence.
Ayatollah Hakim was also head of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution […]
I’ve been maintaining throughout this war that Iraqis would likely consider the US invasion as imperialism and would be justified in doing so. Now today John Judis has a piece in the New Republic making that point at greater length and clarity than I could. I won’t quote here, but it’s definitely worth a read. […]
More from David Warsh on the real causes of the Iraq war:
In basing the public case for its war in Iraq on what it described as an escalating threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, the Bush administration was following an old precept - to be persuasive, make your case as […]
A couple of nights ago, the PBS News Hour had a roundtable discussion of the historical parallels of American occupation after a war victory. Michael Beschloss, once again provided his trademark search for overlooked historical minutiae (here the prospect that Hitler had survived in the Bavarian hills) instead of offering broader-picture analysis of historical movement […]