A couple of days ago when I wrote about Ukraine for LobeLog, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko had a deal on the table to call for a ceasefire with the separatists in the Donbas once Ukrainian government forces had retaken control of the country's long land border with Russia. That's obviously going to require either considerable … Continue reading Has Petro Poroshenko sidelined Russia?

Let's see what people are saying about Iraq...say, what's this? Oh, that looks interesting. I mean, there are a lot more immediate, contemporary reasons why Iraq's Sunni Arabs are rebelling against Baghdad (and why Syria's Sunnis, many from the same old tribes as their Iraqi cousins, are still waging a civil war against Assad, for … Continue reading Historical analogy done wrong

Step 1: Republicans complain that Obama isn't doing enough to bring Benghazi perpetrators, especially alleged ringleader Ahmad Abu Khattalah, to justice Step 2: US special forces (part of the military that, you know, reports to Obama) capture Abu Khattalah Step 3: Republicans declare that said capture is merely a distraction from the real issues, or … Continue reading From Benghazi 2.0 back to Benghazi 1.0

While I've been all-Iraq the past few days here, it's worth noting that all the other things that threaten to destroy the planet haven't gone on hiatus just because ISIS had a good week and a half. Take Ukraine (PLEASE! HAHA THAT JOKE NEVER GETS OLD), for example. The election of a new president whose … Continue reading Remember Ukraine? Yeah, that’s still going on too, at LobeLog

The Pentagon looks toward the Enemy of the Future, which is obviously crowds of unhappy protesters: A US Department of Defense (DoD) research programme is funding universities to model the dynamics, risks and tipping points for large-scale civil unrest across the world, under the supervision of various US military agencies. The multi-million dollar programme is … Continue reading I’m sure this is a Good Thing

I really wasn't going to read that thing, but I had to see if Zack Beauchamp's tweet was accurate: Apparently Bill Kristol and Fred Kagan seem to think ISIS winning would be a victory for *al-Qaeda* http://t.co/Aknr7HbbHE — Zack Beauchamp (@zackbeauchamp) June 17, 2014 ...and it is. It so very, very much is. This path … Continue reading I wasted my beautiful mind

Our top thinkers are thinking top thoughts (via): I don't know, though; I'm more of a fan of their older material.

Is Rasmussen even pretending to be anything other than a glorified push polling outfit anymore? This seems like a pretty clear finding: by a hefty 14-point margin, Americans with an opinion want President Obama to order airstrikes on Iraq. But there are three reasons, broadly speaking, to be skeptical. First, the wording of the Rasmussen question … Continue reading Hack pollster writes hack poll, film at 11

While ISIS consolidates and extends its gains in Iraq, capturing the mostly Sunni (but also mostly Turkmen, not Arab) city of Tal Afar in the north and pushing toward Samarra, which is also mostly Sunni but is home to one of the holiest Imami Shiʿa shrines in the world, a considerable amount of discussion has … Continue reading ISIS’s success is more about Iraq than about the Iraqi army

National Review's Mario Loyola, who is such a Serious foreign policy thinker that he wants the US to just start bombing random stuff in Iran to "dissuade" its nuclear ambitions and thinks that destroying Iraq in the name of non-existent WMD was fine because, like, in some parallel reality Saddam might really have had a … Continue reading Neocon Fight Club super-mad that Obama lost Iraq or something