Roundup: Media's Take

Eliot A. Cohen: Will there be an Afghanistan Syndrome?

[Mr. Cohen was counselor of the Department of State from 2007 to 2009. He teaches at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.] In all of America's wars, we develop stories that help us explain and live with the outcomes. After Vietnam, for example, a consensus gelled: that the civilians in Washington had botched the conflict by micromanaging the generals. And after the Persian Gulf War in 1991, George H.W. Bush's administration developed another storyline

Gregory Rodriguez: The Roots of Redneck Pride

[Gregory Rodriguez is a columnist for the LA Times.] Terms like "redneck" and "white trash" were first used in the 19th century by upper-class whites to classify their poorer cousins. They are essentially the product of the ideology of white supremacy. If, as Southern slave owners argued to justify the enslavement of Africans, whites were a superior race, then those whites who did not exhibit "superior" qualities had to be identified and taken down a no

Lisa Abend: The BP Spill ... Learning from Spain's 2002 Disaster

[Lisa Abend is Spain Correspondent at Time magazine.] In Muxía, they say black stains still occasionally emerge on the white sands of the local beach. But otherwise, nearly eight years after the Prestige tanker broke apart off the coast of this town in northwestern Spain, spilling 66,000 tons of oil, there are few visible signs of damage. Aquatic species have recovered, and the fears of economic collapse in this fishing town dissipated long ago. What remains instead, say those who l

Thomas E. Ricks: In Afghanistan, Petraeus will have difficulty replicating his Iraq success

[Thomas E. Ricks, a former Washington Post reporter, is a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and the author of two books about the Iraq war, most recently "The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008."] This week's confrontation between a senior Army general and the president of the United States may have signaled the beginning of the end of the war in Afghanistan. In a year or two, President Obama will be

Stephen G. Rademaker: The Kremlin’s Nuclear Trump Card

[Stephen G. Rademaker, who served as U.S. assistant secretary of state for arms control from 2002 to 2006, is senior counsel for BGR Government Affairs in Washington.] A recurring theme in the U.S. Senate’s hearings on the New START treaty has been the disappointment expressed by many senators over the treaty’s failure to limit Russia’s tactical nuclear warheads. Supporters of New START respond that the treaty’s exclusive focus on strategic nuclear warheads follows the pattern of al

David Brooks: The Culture of Exposure

[David Brooks is a columnist for the NYT.] The most interesting part of my job is that I get to observe powerful people at close quarters. Most people in government, I find, are there because they sincerely want to do good. But they’re also exhausted and frustrated much of the time. And at these moments they can’t help letting you know that things would be much better if only there weren’t so many morons all around.... Those of us in the press corps have to figure out h

Aaron Zelinsky: Borking Barak: Why the Right's Newest Attack on Kagan Is Wrong

This week, Republicans ramped up their newest attack on Elena Kagan: her praise in 2006 for Aharon Barak, Israel's former Chief Justice. This line of attack is as baseless as it is unsound. In her 2006 remarks, Dean Kagan wasn't sending a dog-whistle to the International-Cabal-of-Judicial-Activists that she would be a mini-Barak. She was declaring that she respected Barak and the values of democracy and human rights he represented. Moreover, the Right's attempt to fit Barak's car

Will Bunch: My Own Personal Odyssey with American Soccer

[Will Bunch is author of the new Tear Down This Myth: How the Reagan Legacy Has Distorted Our Politics and Haunts Our Future, published by Free Press, which examines the calculated effort by the modern right wing to canonize the 40th president, and how that's harmed America on everything from runaway debt to failed energy policies to unchecked greed on Wall Street. He is senior writer for the Philadelphia Daily News and author of its popular blog, Attytood] I was a late-life American

Rosemary Bechler: 50.50 – Equal but Different: a Reply to Ruth Rosen

[Rosemary Bechler is a Contributing Editor for openDemocracy.] Congratulations to 50.50 writer, Ruth Rosen, for writing such a cogent piece about an important subject - the extent to which women’s sections or sections devoted to a gender perspective, such as 50.50, are being siphoned off into spaces where they cannot challenge the dominant discourse. In ‘Gender Apartheid Online’ she lines us up as evidence alongside Salon’s Broadsheet, Slate’s DoubleXX, PoliticsDaily.com’s "Wo

Boubacar Boris Diop: Why is France Still Propping Up Africa's Dictators?

[Boubacar Boris Diop is a writing fellow at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research in Johannesburg.] ...Never in modern political annals has there been anything close to the powerful, inseparable synergy between France and its former empire. At the very moment it realized decolonization was historically inevitable, Paris concocted a true masterpiece of political genius: undertaking all that was necessary in pulling out of Africa -- and doing so in such a way as to, in f

Rory Miller: Why the Irish Support Palestine

[Rory Miller is director of the Middle East and Mediterranean Studies Program at King's College London. He is the author of Ireland and the Palestine Question 1948-2004, published in 2005, and Inglorious Disarray: Europe, Israel and the Palestinians, forthcoming in 2011.] As the world scrambled to respond to Israel's deadly May 31 raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla, the first reaction came from an unlikely source: Ireland. On the morning of June 5, the MV Rachel Corrie, which had set sai

Abigail Thernstrom: A Political Moment to Savor

[Abigail Thernstrom is the author, most recently, of Voting Rights — and Wrongs: The Elusive Quest for Racially Fair Elections. She is an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and vice chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.] State representative Tim Scott, a black Republican, has won the GOP primary in South Carolina’s First Congressional District. It’s not particularly big news in the mainstream media; perhaps Republican victories are always unwelcome — partic

Thomas Sowell: Beyond the McChrystal Flap

[Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.] The flap about Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s “resignation” was nobody’s finest hour. But there are some painful lessons in all this that go beyond any of the individuals involved — the general, the president, or any of the officials at the Pentagon or the State Department. What is far more important than all these individuals put together are the lives of the tens of thousands of Americans fighting in Afghanistan

Michael Barone: Whether He Likes It or Not, Obama Must Command

[Michael Barone is senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner.] We didn’t need this. By “we,” I mean the large majority of citizens who want America to succeed in Afghanistan. By “this,” I mean the Rolling Stone article that quoted Gen. Stanley McChrystal and his aides saying uncomplimentary things about Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and other civilian officials. It’s true that most of the negative remarks were attributed to staffers rather than to McChrystal himse

Lucian K. Truscott IV: The Unsentimental Warrior

[Lucian K. Truscott IV, a journalist, is the author of “Dress Gray.”] ...General McChrystal got it entirely backward: generals definitely don’t die for their soldiers, and soldiers don’t die for generals. They die because generals order them into battle to accomplish a mission, and some are killed carrying out those orders. General McChrystal’s statement is that of a man who is sentimental about his job, and who has confused sentimentality with command.... I’ll tell you

Thomas E. Ricks: Lose a General, Win a War

[Thomas E. Ricks, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and the author of “The Gamble: General Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq,” is writing a history of American generalship since World War II.] ...In the longer term, the Army has to return to its tradition of getting rid of leaders who are failing. The Navy has shown more fortitude; in the first two months of this year alone it fired six commanders of ships and installations. On Tuesday, it

Michael Rubin: Turkey, from Ally to Enemy

[Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School.] Traveling abroad on his first trip as president, Barack Obama tacked a visit to Turkey onto the tail end of a trip to Europe. “Some people have asked me if I chose to continue my travels to Ankara and Istanbul to send a message,” he told the Turkish Parliament. “My answer is simple: Evet [yes]. Turkey is a critical ally.” On the same visit, however, the pr

Jeffrey Lord: Eric Holder is Obama's Harry Daugherty

[Jeffrey Lord is a former Reagan White House political director and author. He writes from Pennsylvania at jlpa1@aol.com.] Justice is supposed to be blind. It isn't supposed to be rocket science. Eric Holder, he of the prestigious Stuyvesant School for the intellectually gifted, Columbia University (where he was co-captain of his basketball team), and Columbia Law School -- is neither blind nor a rocket scientist.

George F. Will: Why McChrystal Had to Go

[George F. Will is a columnist for the Washington Post.] In 1932, during a lunch in Albany with Rexford Tugwell, an adviser, New York Gov. Franklin Roosevelt paused to take a telephone call from Louisiana Gov. Huey Long. When the call ended, FDR referred to Long as the second-most dangerous man in America. Who, Tugwell asked, is the most dangerous? FDR answered: Douglas MacArthur. As Army chief of staff, MacArthur had just flamboyantly conducted the violent dispersal of

Leon Aron: In Russia, a Climate of Fear is Stifling Innovation

[Leon Aron is director of Russian studies at the American Enterprise Institute.] Having survived — barely — an 8% contraction in its gross domestic product (the worst among the G-20 countries), Russia's prospects for the next few years are iffy at best. Unless oil shoots back up to more than $100 a barrel, the country's economy may grow only slightly — or stagnate for the next few years. In response to its economic woes, the Kremlin has decided that what Russia needs is