Roundup: Media's Take

Gregory Scoblete: Rewriting the History on Afghanistan

[Gregory Scoblete is an editor at RealClearWorld.] Republican National Committee Chairmen Michael Steele made headlines earlier this month when he declared that Afghanistan was "Obama's war." Speaking to candidates at a party fundraiser in Connecticut, Steele said of the war in Afghanistan: "This is not something the United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in." The implication of Steele's remarks was obvious: The naive liberals in t

Richard Cohen: Michael Steele was Right about Afghanistan

[Richard Cohen is a columnist with the Washington Post.] "Facts are the enemy of truth," Don Quixote tweeted so very long ago -- and as if to prove his point, the Democratic Party in all its tawdry glory unloosed a barrage of facts in the direction of the slyly brilliant Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee who is almost certain to someday take his place in the conservative cable TV firmament. For saying that the war in Afghanistan is "a war o

Gabriel J. Chin and Kevin R. Johnson: High Court Ruling Underpins Arizona Immigration Law

[Gabriel J. Chin is a professor at the University of Arizona Rogers College of Law. Kevin R. Johnson is dean and a professor of public interest law and Chicana/o studies at the University of California Davis School of Law. ] In its challenge to Arizona's controversial immigration law last week, the Justice Department argues that the state law conflicts with federal law, intruding on federal power and ability to regulate immigration. For many Americans, however, the lawsuit is needed

Andrei Soldatov: Nostalgia for Soviet Spies

[Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan are security analysts with Agentura.ru. This comment appeared in EJ.ru.] The Russian spy scandal has focused attention on whether the use of “illegals,” undercover agents with no diplomatic immunity, makes any sense in the 21st century. Comparisons to Soviet-era illegals who were quite successful during the Cold War are not valid. The Cold War was a war of ideologies, and the moral corruption of the enemy was the chief objective. But t

Goran Fejic: Midnight in Belgrade, Dusk in Brussels

[Goran Fejic is senior adviser in the strategy and policy unit at the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA)] Almost two decades ago, the violent disintegration of the former Yugoslavia was about to begin and the then European Community was testing its emerging “soft power” by projecting onto the virulent nationalisms of the Balkans its own claimed values and principles. Many of today’s “Yugonostalgics” are all too keen to bl

Damon W. Root: Civil Rights and Armed Self-Defense

[Damon W. Root is an associate editor at Reason magazine.] ...In his concurring opinion last month in the landmark gun rights case McDonald v. Chicago, [Clarence] Thomas held that the right to keep and bear arms is fully applicable against state and local governments via the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the 14th Amendment. In the process, Thomas provided a sweeping history of the 14th Amendment’s roots in the anti-slavery movement and its original purpose as a shield against t

Anna M. Clark: Obama's Bigger Problem with the Gulf Oil Spill -- You

[Anna M. Clark is the author of "Green, American Style." She blogs on Ecoleadership for Greenbiz.com.] American citizens don't agree on much, but on this point we are united: liberty. As with other broad ideological concepts, many Americans struggle to articulate a precise definition of liberty. Yet this doesn't prevent us from holding firm to the belief that liberty is a fundamental right, and that if required, we would die for it. For our forefa

Kumi Naidoo: Warriors of the Rainbow

[Kumi Naidoo is the executive director of Greenpeace International.] Twenty-five years ago Saturday, two bombs planted by secret agents working for the French government sank the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbor, New Zealand, killing Fernando Pereira, a photographer and father of two. This was a desperate move by France to stop the activists onboard from bearing witness to its nuclear testing in the South Pacific. I remember hearing about the attack ov

Harley Balzer: A Successful Waste of Money by the Russians

[Harley Balzer is associate professor of government and international affairs at Georgetown University.] ...The waste of money and talent is the norm for much of what Russia does on the global stage, and it is nothing new. Russia consistently squanders large sums chasing prestige, with much of the money ending up in the pockets of corrupt officials. Back in the U.S.S.R., the space program was a prime example. Parallel to the scientific and military space effort, dominat

Michael S. Roth: Good and Risky: the Promise of a Liberal Education

[Michael S. Roth is president of Wesleyan University.] On the very first page of her slim new book, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities, the philosopher Martha Nussbaum warns, "We are in a crisis of massive proportions and grave global significance." She's not talking about a calamity caused by climate change, nor is she referring to nuclear proliferation, global poverty, or unchecked population growth. No, the worldwide crisis that frightens Nu

Robert McHenry: The Radical Right in Retrospect

[Robert McHenry is a former editor-in-chief of Encyclopaedia Britannica and author of How to Know.] In 1955 the sociologist Daniel Bell edited a volume of essays under the title The New American Right. The essays addressed, from various standpoints and with the tools of various disciplines, the phenomenon of McCarthyism and related expressions of far-right-wing politics. A new edition, with supplemental essays by many of the same authors, appeared in 1963 as The Radical Right.

Sasha Abramsky: Look Ahead in Anger

[Sasha Abramsky is a Sacramento-based freelance journalist and a lecturer in the writing program at the University of California at Davis. He is author, most recently, of Inside Obama's Brain (Portfolio, 2009).] In many ways, whether our political leanings are left, right, or middle of the road, rage is our shared experience these days. One way of looking at what is happening is that it is an expression of our anxiety over what increasingly looks to be Pax Americana's departing hege

Jacob Heilbrunn: The New START treaty deserves to be ratified

[Jacob Heilbrunn is a senior editor at the National Interest.] Here we go again. President Obama signed a nuclear arms control agreement — the New START treaty — with Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev in Prague in April to much fanfare. Senate hearings on the treaty are taking place. But in a reprise of Cold War debates, hard-liners are seeking to block Senate ratification of the treaty, where it needs a two-thirds majority, by depicting the deal as a dangerous sellou

M K Bhadrakumar: US-Russia reset on the skids

[Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.] Last week, with a neat turn of phrase, United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton captured the quintessence of the United States "reset" of ties with Russia. During her halt in Tbilisi on Monday during her five-day, five-nation tour of Eastern Europe and the

David J. Kramer: U.S. Acted Too Hastily in Spy Swap

[David J. Kramer is senior trans-Atlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Washington. During the administration of George W. Bush, he served as deputy assistant secretary of state for Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. He writes here in a personal capacity.] Most analysts in the United States are praising U.S. President Barack Obama and the way his administration handled the spy swap. Many in Russia, by comparison, are blasting the Foreign Intelligence Service f

Vladimir Frolov: Most Humiliating Spy Flop in Russian History

[Vladimir Frolov is president of LEFF Group, a government-relations and PR company.] President Dmitry Medvedev made the right decision to downplay the importance of the latest spy scandal between Russia and the United States and to arrange for a quick exchange of 10 clandestine Russian operatives. This should allow the scandal to die off quickly, while letting Washington and Moscow maintain the momentum of the “reset.” Medvedev now has to order a high-profile investigat

Alexei Bayer: Spying Is a Laughing Matter

[Alexei Bayer, a native Muscovite, is a New York-based economist.] It is tempting to regard the Russian spy scandal and the subsequent Cold War-style exchange involving more than a dozen prisoners from both sides on a tarmac in Vienna as an illustration of Karl Marx’s famous saying: “History repeats itself — first as tragedy, second as farce.” Indeed, the Russian “illegals” seem to have spied like characters in a third-rate spy novel, complete with invisible ink and hol

Nicholas D. Kristof: Waiting for Gandhi on the West Bank

[The New York Times' Nicholas D. Kristof blogs about human rights and the effects of globalization, focusing on third-world countries.] Despite being stoned and tear-gassed on this trip, I find a reed of hope here. It’s that some Palestinians are dabbling in a strategy of nonviolent resistance that just might be a game-changer. The organizers hail the methods of Gandhi and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., recognizing that nonviolent resistance could be a more powerful

Peter Brookes and Owen Graham: U.S.-Russia's New START is a non-starter

[Peter Brookes is Senior Fellow, National Security Affairs and Chung Ju-Yung Fellow for Policy Studies in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation. Owen Graham is Research Assistant in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.] With Herculean-like effort, the Obama Administration continues to insist that the New START treaty between the United States and Russia will not limit U.S. ba

Derek Thompson: Ronald Reagan Raised Taxes in a Recession, Too

[Derek Thompson is a staff editor at Atlantic Business, where he writes about economics, business and technology. Derek has also written for BusinessWeek and Slate.] I do not agree with most things written by Amity Shlaes, the right's resident historical revisionist....[S]he's blaming FDR's tax policy for the 1937 double dip and warning that letting parts of the Bush tax cuts expire will do the same... [A] reason to think she might be wrong is that Reagan raised taxes i