Roundup: Media's Take

Melvin A. Goodman: Strategy and Logistics in Afghanistan: Flawed Thinking

[Melvin A. Goodman is national security and intelligence columnist for Truthout. He is senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and adjunct professor of government at Johns Hopkins University. His 42-year government career included service at the CIA, State Department, Defense Department and the US Army. His latest book is "Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA."] Logistics will be the key to introducing 30,000 soldiers and Marines into Afg

Graham E. Fuller: Stretching Out an Ugly Struggle

[Graham E. Fuller is a former C.I.A. station chief in Kabul and a former vice-chairman of the C.I.A.’s National Intelligence Council. He is author of numerous books on the Middle East, including “The Future of Political Islam.”Tribune Media Services] Many decades ago as a fledgling C.I.A. officer in the field, I was naïvely convinced that if the facts were reported back to Washington correctly, everything else would take care of itself in policymaking. The first loss of innocence co

WSJ Editorial: The Welfare State and Military Power

For our money, one of the better parts of President Obama's speech at West Point this week was his connection between a healthy economy and U.S. national security. To quote: "Our prosperity provides a foundation for our power. It pays for our military. It underwrites our diplomacy." We only wish Mr. Obama understood the link between the larger welfare state he is trying to build at home and the economic weakness that will undermine our military power. The proof is right be

Barbara Ehrenreich: Welcome to the Women's Movement 2.0

[Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of 17 books, including the bestsellers Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch. A frequent contributor to Harper's and the Nation, she has also been a columnist at the New York Times and Time magazine. Her seventeenth book, Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America (Metropolitan Books), has just been published.] Has feminism been replaced by the pink-ribbon breast cancer cult? When the House of Represent

Joe Conason: TA Crushing Legacy of Bush

[Joe Conason is national correspondent for The New York Observer, where he writes a weekly column distributed by Creators Syndicate. He is also a columnist for Salon.com, and the Director of the Nation Institute Investigative Fund. His books Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth, and The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton, with Gene Lyons, were both national bestsellers; his latest book, It Can Happen Here: Auth

Dave Zirin: Message to Obama: You Can't Have Muhammad Ali

[Dave Zirin is the author of A People's History of Sports in the United States (The New Press) Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.] On November 19th, President Barack Obama wrote a stirring tribute in USA Today to the most famous draft resister in US history, Muhammad Ali. On Tuesday, Obama spoke at West Point, calling for an in

Bob Cesca: Obama's Unavoidable Cure for the Afghanistan Cancer

[Bob Cesca is a Political Writer, Blogger, and New Media Producer] Whether you like it or not, if you voted for President Obama last year, you are partly responsible for this strategy. That's not entirely a bad thing depending on your position on the war, but it's worth repeating that the president never spoke of drawing down our forces in the Af-Pak region during the campaign, nor did he mention such a thing during his first 10 months in office. So last night's announc

Jon Haber: Boycott revival? (Israel)

[The writer is the creator of the anti-divestment Web site www.divestthis.com.] After a three year slumber, the divest-from-Israel "movement" in the US is making an attempt at self-resurrection. It remains to be seen if history will repeat itself this time as tragedy or farce. "Boycott, divestment and sanctions," or BDS, originally just one of many competing tactics used by anti-Israel activists and organizati

Patrick Seale: Turkey, the Kurds and Israel

In launching his ‘Democratic Opening’ towards Turkey’s 15 million Kurds earlier this month, Prime Minister Tayyip Recep Erdogan has embarked on possibly the most perilous phase of his political career. His Kurdish initiative could lose him precious votes at the next election. If it misfires, it could even bring an end to the AKP’s domination of the Turkish political landscape, which began with its first electoral victory in 2002. The initiative has already aroused the fierce hostili

Andrew Leonard: Christianity's role in the financial crash

[Andrew Leonard has been working at Salon as a technology reporter, editor and blogger for quite a bit longer than he ever anticipated being employed by an online magazine -- 12 years.] "Did Christianity Cause the Crash?" is the kind of leading headline question ever-popular with bloggers desperate for readers to click through. (Yes, I plead guilty.) Whether the answer that pops in your head is yes or no, you're impelled to read the story, if only to disagree viscerally or

Richard Bernstein: As Notorious Khmer Figure Is Tried, Few in U.S. Take Notice

[Richard Bernstein writes for the International Herald Tribune.] A “historic” event — in the words of some experts and observers — finished its first momentous phase in Cambodia a few days ago, but it doesn’t seem as though many in the United States know or care. To be sure, a few newspapers have provided continuing coverage of the nine-month trial of Kaing Guek Eav, known as Comrade Duch, who was the director of the Tuol Sleng prison during the years the Khmer Rouge wa

Nicholas D. Kristof: Johnson, Gorbachev, Obama

[Nicholas D. Kristof, a columnist for The Times since 2001, is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner who writes op-ed columns that appear twice a week.] Imagine you’re a villager living in southern Afghanistan. You’re barely educated, proud of your region’s history of stopping invaders and suspicious of outsiders. Like most of your fellow Pashtuns, you generally dislike the Taliban because many are overzealous, truculent nutcases. Yet you are even more suspiciou

John B. Judis: Sorry, But I Hear Echoes of Vietnam

[John B. Judis is Senior Editor for The New Republic] I don’t oppose what Barack Obama plans to do in Afghanistan. I don’t know enough, and from what I know, I don’t have an alternative to propose. I would have preferred he find a way to achieve American objectives without escalating the war, but I agree with his objective of denying al Qaeda a home in Afghanistan through a Taliban victory, and I hope that his strategy will achieve it. Still, I have my doubts. What both

Elizabeth D. Samet: A Lonely Kind of Courage, The view from within Eisenhower Hall at West Point

[Elizabeth D. Samet is a professor of English at the U.S. Military Academy and the author of Soldier’s Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point. The opinions she expresses here are her own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Military Academy, the Department of the Army, or the Department of Defense.] When, at 6:15 pm--known in local parlance as 1815--coveted ticket in hand, I boarded a bus with various members of the West Point community for the short ri

Henry Morgenthau III: Crashing F.D.R.'s Party

[Henry Morgenthau III, a retired television producer and writer, is the author of “Mostly Morgenthaus: A Family History.”] Cambridge, Mass. FOR those of us with long memories, crashing a White House party, as a Virginia couple did when they sneaked into a state dinner last week, is nothing new. Consider something that happened nearly 71 years ago, on New Year’s Eve. That night, Dec. 31, 1938, my kid brother, Robert, and I were invited to join our parents an

Richard Viguerie: Conservatives Don't Need a Litmus Test for RINOs

[Viguerie's op-eds have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsday, USA Today, the Scripps-Howard newspapers, and literally hundreds of other publications. The Washington Post called him “the Conservatives’ Voice of America.”] In an interview with the Baltimore Sun today, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele publicly rejected the candidate “litmus test” proposed by a group of national conservatives. The concept behind the proposal is to forc

Elliott Abrams and Michael Singh: Spoilers: The End of the Peace Process

[Elliott Abrams, until recently a deputy national security adviser, is a senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Michael Singh is a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.]In December 2000, the president had put forward his far-reaching set of parameters on all the final status issues. . . . He was even prepared to spend his last four days in office negotiating the deal. A desperate Barak was waiting for the call to a final s

Dr. Joseph Gerson: Obama's Afghan 'Strategy' - Another American Tragedy

[Dr. Joseph Gerson is director of programs and director of the Peace and Economic Security Program of the American Friends Service Committee.] Shortly after President Obama's Afghanistan War escalation speech, I was contacted by the Voice of America's Russian Language Service. They wanted to interview me. These are the questions they asked: What do you think about Obama's new strategy for Afghanistan? Were you surprised by it? Do you think it would be possible to carry out all Obama

Melvin A. Goodman: President Obama, Afghanistan and US National Security

[Melvin A. Goodman is national security and intelligence columnist for Truthout. He is senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and adjunct professor of government at Johns Hopkins University. His 42-year government career included service at the CIA, State Department, Defense Department and the US Army. His latest book is "Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA."] President Barack Obama announced last night that he will send 30,000 additiona

Jennifer Loven: Obama's War Strategy Recalls That of President Bush

[Jennifer Loven is an American journalist and a White House press correspondent for the Associated Press] Washington (AP) - It feels like 2007 all over again. Different war, different president, but "surge" is back in vogue. President Barack Obama's revamped Afghanistan strategy involves rushing -- faster than may prove possible -- 30,000 more troops into the fight by next summer. The abrupt infusion of U.S. military might is aimed at jump-starting a war that