Roundup: Media's Take

Bret Stephens: Is Afghanistan Worth It?

[Mr. Stephens writes the Journal's "Global View" column on foreign affairs.] Even Americans who pride themselves on knowing their history have probably never heard of the Battle of Stones River. Fought over frigid ground in January 1863, the battle gave the Union control over central Tennessee and a badly needed morale boost after the disaster of Fredericksburg two weeks earlier. It also resulted in 1,700 Union and 1,300 Confederate deaths. That's nearly three times the fa

NYT Editorial: What They're Not Telling You About the Deficit

There is a lot of heated talk in Washington these days about the deficit, unfortunately little of it serious. Playing on Americans’ deep anxiety about the economy, Republican politicians have seized the deficit issue as their own — eagerly blaming the stimulus and even an extension of unemployment insurance for the problem — while denying their own culpability for helping dig this deep hole with years of irresponsible tax cuts. The Democrats in Congress have all but ceded the debate

Gregory Rodriguez: Affirmative Action's Time is Up

[Gregory Rodriguez is a columnist for the LA Times.] ...Ideally, policy, like politics, is the art of the possible. No matter how good its intentions or outcomes, the benefits of any policy should clearly outweigh the social costs. When affirmative action was established, it was intended to benefit a small percentage of the U.S. population, but as the rationale and scope of the program evolved, so did the number of people it included. Large-scale post-1965 immigration also complicat

Arthur Laffer: The Soak-the-Rich Catch-22

[Mr. Laffer is the chairman of Laffer Associates and co-author of"Return to Prosperity: How America Can Regain Its Economic Superpower Status" (Threshold, 2010).]Tax reduction thus sets off a process that can bring gains for everyone, gains won by marshalling resources that would otherwise stand idle—workers without jobs and farm and factory capacity without markets. Yet many taxpayers seemed prepared to deny the nation the fruits of tax reduction because they question the fina

Frank Rich: Kiss This War Goodbye

[Frank Rich is a Sunday columnist for the NYT.] IT was on a Sunday morning, June 13, 1971, that The Times published its first installment of the Pentagon Papers. Few readers may have been more excited than a circle of aspiring undergraduate journalists who’d worked at The Harvard Crimson. Though the identity of The Times’s source wouldn’t eke out for several days, we knew the whistle-blower had to be Daniel Ellsberg, an intense research fellow at M.I.T. and former Robert McNamara ac

Ann Jones: In Bed With the Army

[Ann Jones is the author of Kabul in Winter (Metropolitan, 2006). Her newest book about women in conflict zones, War Is Not Over When It’s Over, will be published by Metropolitan in September.]In the eight years I’ve reported on Afghanistan, I’ve “embedded” regularly with Afghan civilians, especially women.  Recently, however, with American troops “surging” and journalists getting into the swing of the military’s counterinsurgency “strategy” (better known by its acronym, COIN), I

Jeffrey Goldberg: What Would Brandeis Do?

[Jeffrey Goldberg is a national correspondent for The Atlantic. Author of the book Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror, he has reported from the Middle East and Africa. He also writes the magazine's advice column.] Jeffrey Rosen's recent New Republic cover story on Louis Brandeis was one of the best articles I've read in several months, on any subject;

Xujun Eberlein: The Return of Politically-Charged Chinese Sci-Fi

[Xujun Eberlein is the author of Apologies Forthcoming, a story collection set in China. Her reviews of China-themed books can be found in Women's Review of Books, The China Beat, and elsewhere.] In the euphoric Beijing of 2013, Starbucks is Chinese-owned and called "Starbucks Wangwang." Its trademark drink is Longjing Latté, named for a famed Chinese tea. It is a place where Mr. Chen, an immigrant from Hong Kong, feels comfortable escorting a marginalized woman named Xiao

Amil Imani: The Islamic Republic Is Not Iran

[Amil Imani is the author of Obama meets Ahmadinejad.] ...In 1979, the U.S. government (notably Jimmy Carter and the Company), with the help of its allied forces, created the greatest Islamic terrorist nation on the face of the earth and the spurred the rise of Islamofascism elsewhere. In fact, Jimmy Carter, by his interference in another country, betrayed the most valued friend to the West, the late Shah of Iran. Carter is perhaps responsible for the formation of Islamic terrorism

Ross Buettner: Running Government as a Cash Business

[Ross Buettner is a reporter with the NYT.] ...Official corruption is much in the news lately — including an upcoming House ethics trial against Representative Charles B. Rangel of New York and expected ethics charges against Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat of California. So it might be worth revisiting a few politicians who appear to have gotten away with their misdeeds, and some who nearly did. The folksy Illinois secretary of state, Paul Powell, was under no s

David E. Sanger: Rethinking the Afghanistan War’s What-Ifs

[David E. Sanger is chief Washington correspondent for the NYT.] ...If only we had not been distracted by Iraq, or averted our eyes from the Taliban’s resurgence, or confronted the realities of Pakistan’s fighting both sides of the war ... If only.... Just because a strategy is flawed does not mean that another approach would have worked. The British spent a century arguing over whether a lighter hand or devastating military might could have put down the Am

Gerry Adams: WikiLeaks and British lies in Ireland

[Gerry Adams is president of Sinn Féin, member of the Legislative Assembly of Northern Ireland for West Belfast and abstentionist MP for West Belfast at Westminster.] In June I stood in the Guildhall Square in Derry and watched as the relatives of the 14 innocent victims of the British Parachute Regiment expressed their delight at the Saville report's conclusion that the 14 were innocent victims. After Bloody Sunday, the British system and, to its shame, much of the British media, a

Charles Moore: A timely recounting of the Weimar disaster that aided Hitler's rise to power

[Charles Moore is a columnist at The Daily Telegraph.] This book, first published in 1975, has just been republished as a warning. It was spotted by Warren Buffett and printed on the internet. Now an enterprising publisher has rushed it out. Concerned citizens have sent copies to central bankers to remind them of what was once, and could be again. In fact, though, its report of the German hyperinflation is so extreme that it has the perverse effect of making the modern

Editorial in the Vedomosti: New Warnings of a Return to Brezhnev Era

[This comment appeared as an editorial in Vedomosti. Richard Lourie will return to this spot in September.] Russia’s security and law enforcement agencies have a case of summer fever. On Thursday, President Dmitry Medvedev signed a law that expands the powers of the Federal Security Service. The main provision allows the FSB to issue warnings to people whose actions “create the conditions for a crime.” The bill allows for 15-day sentences or fines of 500 rubles to 1,000 rubles ($16.

Steve Kornacki: Don't Call Obama the Next LBJ

[Steve Kornacki is Salon's news editor. Reach him by email at SKornacki@salon.com.] This was the week for comparisons between Barack Obama and Lyndon Johnson -- and it shouldn't have come as a surprise to the current president.... Perhaps the key difference is that Obama enjoys a tight and intimate bond with the Democratic base -- the kind of personal relationship that always eluded LBJ. This was reflected in the path that both

Abraham Cooper: The Oliver Stone Danger

[Rabbi Abraham Cooper is associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Museum of Tolerance.] ...Why all the angst over such a production? For one thing, Stone's extreme makeover of the 20th century's greatest butchers in a U.S. production could resonate in all the wrong places overseas. It parallels troubling real-life makeovers of tyrants and the trivialization of the Holocaust: • In Germany, "revisionist" historians apologetically argue that Nazi dea

John R. Bohrer: War Room What Newt's Really Running For (Hint: It's Not President)

[John R. Bohrer is currently writing a book about Senator Robert Kennedy and his young aides] The Los Angeles Times recently marked the 50th anniversary of the 1960 Democratic National Convention by posting a few rare photos from its archive. In one, a group of young intellectuals prop up signs for the last-minute effort to draft two-time nominee Adlai Stevenson. What slogan do you pick for a candidate who has just been rejected in consecutive landslides? "America

Andrew Leonard: Lyndon Johnson's Tea Party

[Andrew Leonard is a staff writer at Salon.]I've been reading"Nixonland," Rick Perlstein's illuminating history of how the U.S. fractured into red and blue. Here's an excerpt covering the midterm elections of 1966, just two years after Lyndon Johnson's enormous landslide victory over Barry Goldwater.Tuesday came the deluge."In the space of a single autumn day," announced Newsweek,"the 1,000 day reign of Lyndon I came to an end." Twenty-seven of Johnson's forty-

Konstantin Sonin: Russia's Little Castro in Belarus

[Konstantin Sonin, professor at the New School of Economics in Moscow, is a columnist for Vedomosti.] The political life of Cuban leader Fidel Castro goes on and on, thwarting all attempts to draw up a final summary of his reign. Over the course of Castro’s 50 years in power, Cubans’ standard of living has remained practically unchanged — even as living conditions have improved by leaps and bounds in most other countries. Among the many questions I’d like to pose: How was Castro abl

Dimitri K. Simes and Dov S. Zakheim: Don't Rush START

[Dimitri K. Simes is the president of The Nixon Center and publisher of The National Interest. Dov S. Zakheim was undersecretary of defense in the George W. Bush administration and is a member of The Nixon Center Board. The views expressed herein are entirely their own.] Senator John Kerry is absolutely right that “even in these polarized times,” responsible statesmen “should know that the security of the United States is too important to treat it as fodder for political posturing.”