Peter Beinart is still real sorry about that whole Iraq War that he pushed a decade or so ago, and he gets why it's upsetting ("infuriating" is the word he uses) to see the same gang of incompetent ideologues who caused Iraq to fall apart in the first place being invited back on TV to … Continue reading SENSIBLE FOREIGN POLICY LIBERALS–ASSEMBLE!

Ezra Klein has an interesting take on Hillary Clinton's several recent gaffe-ish incidents, from her on-air tussle with Terry Gross to her tone-deaf attempts to portray her and Bill as just regular middle class folks. He thinks they're all happening by design, or rather that Clinton's book tour has been designed to let her get … Continue reading How many trial runs does a person need?

When ISIS and Al-Qaeda Central agreed to disagree a couple of months ago, it was about who gets to call the shots in the global jihad network. You get a lot of western media talking about how ISIS was "too extreme" for AQC, and it's true that excessive violence against fellow Muslims was one of … Continue reading ISIS can’t help itself, but dealing with it is only the first step

This New York Times piece reflects pretty well just how quickly things changed in Ukraine today. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who for a couple of days has been making positive noises about Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's proposed cease-fire with rebels in Donbas, actually asked his parliament to repeal its March 1 resolution authorizing the use … Continue reading Almost a small breakthrough in Ukraine

Between spending most of last week feeling like I was dying of the Spanish Flu, playing host to our neighbor's dog all weekend (which I of course treated like we were a five-star dog resort in danger of getting a bad review on dog Yelp instead of just letting the dog do its own thing), … Continue reading You get a cookie, part 11 of ???: Dov Charney, former CEO of American Apparel

It didn't take long to identify one: Wearing a flak jacket with a pistol on his hip, the president of the Iraqi Turkmen Front (ITF), Arshad Salihi, announced yesterday the mobilisation of a new Turkmen militia in the city of Kirkuk, saying that if the Kurdish Peshmerga forces "refuse to return Kirkuk [to the Iraqi … Continue reading What’s the next potential fault line in Iraq?

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