Roundup: Media's Take

Open Left: 2008 Electorate: Looking Back, 1988 vs 2008

[OpenLeft is a news, analysis and action website dedicated toward building a progressive governing majority in America. The three founding partners are Chris Bowers, Mike Lux, and Matt Stoller.] After a year it's worth looking back to when the United States elected a Democrat to the office of President of the United States with a majority of popular votes, the electoral college, and no input from the Supreme Court for the first time in 32 years.  The changes in the behavior a

Open Left: 2008 Electorate: Alternate History

[OpenLeft is a news, analysis and action website dedicated toward building a progressive governing majority in America. The three founding partners are Chris Bowers, Mike Lux, and Matt Stoller.] (A really great look at the diverse roots of our progressive majority, and how it has been constituted by historical struggles over time. - promoted by Paul Rosenberg) A (now long-ago) comment by fladem (pointing out that Obama won all the states that Lincoln won in 1860) led to

David Satter: Yesterday Communism, Today Radical Islam

[David Satter is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a visiting scholar at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He is the author of Age of Delirium: the Decline and Fall of the Soviet Union (Yale), which is being made into a documentary film.] As we mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the emphasis should not be on speeches and ceremonies but rather on the lessons of the fall of communism for the war on terror.

Stuart Koehl: The Byzantine Doctrine ... What the U.S. could learn from the foreign policy of the Byzantine Empire

[Stuart Koehl is a military analyst at Johns Hopkins University's Center for Transatlantic Relations.] The incomparable and irrepressible Edward N. Luttwak has a short article in the November/December issue of Foreign Policy called "Take Me Back to Constantinople: How Byzantium, not Rome, can help preserve Pax Americana." Still one of America's leading strategic minds, Luttwak literally wrote the book on the subject with Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace, as well as on

Lawrence Wright: What really happened during the Israeli attacks?

Lawrence Wright has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1992.] In southwest Israel, at the border of Egypt and the Gaza Strip, there is a small crossing station not far from a kibbutz named Kerem Shalom. A guard tower looms over the flat, scrubby buffer zone. Gaza never extends more than seven miles wide, and the guards in the tower can see the Mediterranean Sea, to the north. The main street in Gaza, Salah El-Deen Road, runs along the entire twenty-five-mile span of the ter

Patrick J. Buchanan: The American Way of Abandonment

[Pat Buchanan has been a senior adviser to three presidents, twice a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination and the presidential nominee of the Reform Party in 2000. Buchanan has written eight books, including four New York Times best-sellers. He is married to the former Shelley Ann Scarney, a member of the White House staff from 1969 to 1975.] When America is about to throw an ally to the wolves, we follow an established ritual. We discover that the man we supported w

Craig Nelson: Obama betrays hope created by Cairo speech

[Craig Nelson is Associate Editor of The National] It’s official: forget Cairo. Fold up the speech and throw it in the bin, or put it in that already bulging folder marked “Bad Faith & Broken Promises”. That seems to be the unintended but unavoidably obvious message of the about-face by the US president Barack Obama and his decision last weekend to press ahead with Israeli-Palestinian talks despite Arab and Palestinian demands that Israel halt West Bank settlement c

Edward Luce: The Vietnam moment

[Edward Luce is the Washington commentator for the Financial Times] Seven years ago, Dick Cheney proclaimed: “The Taliban is out of business, permanently.” Last week, the former vice-president came close to accusing Barack Obama of lacking the guts to “do what it takes” to win the war against the very same Taliban. Some time in the next two weeks, Mr Obama is likely to bring months of agonised deliberation to a close when he decides how many more troops to send to Afgha

Froma Harrop: The Population Boomerang in Iran

[Froma Harrop is an independent-minded, liberal writer and author. She is best known for her twice-a-week syndicated column which appears in about 200 newspapers including the Seattle Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Denver Post, Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle, Detroit News, and Miami Herald.] Iranian students are engaging this week in Round Two of their street-level struggle for reform. Round One took place last June, when young people protested the fixed re-election of Presid

Jean MacKenzie: Abdullah vs. Karzai

[Jean MacKenzie is the director of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting in Afghanistan and reports for GlobalPost News.] Kabul, Afghanistan The spectacle of Afghanistan’s presidential elections seems to be finally entering its final act. Pulling out of the runoff race at the last minute, Abdullah Abdullah has cleared the way for Hamed Karzai to be the winner by default. Both men appear to have achieved many, if not all, of their original goals. Karza

John McWhorter: Dying Languages Should Be Saved: But Will They Be Spoken?

[John McWhorter is a contributing editor for The New Republic] You never know which ones of your pieces are going to get around. Last week World Affairs published an essay I wrote exploring whether it would necessarily be such a horrible thing if only one language were spoken in the world. I write that within a context: of the 6000 languages on earth, it is estimated that only about 600 will exist a hundred years from now. The big languages are edging the tiny ones, and

Steve Ross: The Writer-in-Chief

[Steve Ross is the Former President, Collins Division at HarperCollins and Sr. VP, Crown Division at Random House] "I have an amazing story to tell you," she said, stepping into my office. "She" was the editorial director whose balanced perspective and judgment made her essential to me as Publisher and to the editorial staff. "Okay, let's hear it." One of the editors, she told me, had read a profile written by Scot

Rich Lowry: Behind Obama's Berlin Wall Snub

[Rich Lowry is the editor of National Review.] In his first year in office, Bar ack Obama has visited more foreign countries than any other president. He has touched ground in 16 countries, easily outpacing Bill Clinton (three) and George W. Bush (11). It's an itinerary befitting a "citizen of the world." But there's one stop Obama won't make: He has begged off going to Berlin next week to attend ceremonies commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall. His sched

John Mearsheimer: Wrong Vietnam Lesson for Afghanistan

[John Mearsheimer, a West Point graduate, is a political science professor at the University of Chicago.] The conventional wisdom among most Republicans is that while the United States had serious difficulty in Vietnam during the early years, by the early 1970s things were turning around, and victory was on the verge. Unfortunately, the craven Democrats in Congress bowed to widespread anti-war sentiment and forced the Ford administration to end almost all support to South Vietnam, a

Russ Baker: What Obama Is Up Against

[Russ Baker is an investigative journalist and founder of the nonprofit reporting web site whowhatwhy.com. His latest book, "Family of Secrets: the Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years," now available in hardcover, will be published in paperback this fall. Gore Vidal calls it "one of the most important books of the past ten years."] The first anniversary of Barack Obama's historic election finds many of his

Eugene Robinson: Down This Road Before (on trying to stop the opium trade in Afghanistan)

[Eugene Robinson is an Associate Editor and twice-weekly columnist for The Washington Post.] Washington - The opium poppy was introduced to Afghanistan more than 2,300 years ago by the armies of Alexander the Great. His forces were eventually driven out, like those of every would-be conqueror since. The poppy has proved more tenacious. On Monday, three U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents -- Forrest Leamon, Chad Michael and Michael Weston, all from the Washi

Dave Jamieson: Heavyweights in American politics

[Dave Jamieson is a freelance writer in Washington, D.C.] In New Jersey, any candidate for high office can count on getting smeared over taxes, corruption, the economy, or all of the above. But in this fall's hard-fought gubernatorial race, an unlikely issue has popped up amidst the usual mud-slinging: the portly physique of Republican challenger Chris Christie. Ever since Jon Corzine released his now-infamous attack ad, in which a disdainful voiceover claims Christie improperly &qu

Mikhail Gorbachev: Now Clear Away the Rubble of the Wall

[Mikhail Gorbachev was the last leader of the Soviet Union.] The year 1989 was a turning point for Europe and for the world, a time when history went into high gear. This acceleration was symbolized by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the velvet revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe. Totalitarian and authoritarian regimes were exiting the stage of history. Those events, and their peaceful unfolding, were made possible by changes that began in the Soviet Union in the

Mehmet Hasgüler and Murat Tüzünkan: Cyprus at a Crossroads

[Mehmet Hasgüler is an associate professor of international relations at Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University in Turkey. Murat Tüzünkan is an assistant professor in the department of international relations, Cyprus International University.] Cyprus is an island boxed in on three sides by Turkey and the countries of the Levant. On the streets of its divided capital Nicosia, silence prevails, except for the tick-tack sounds coming from the tables of the city's backgammon players, who gat

Scott Ritter: McChrystal Doesn’t Get It—Does Obama?

[Scott Ritter is a former Marine intelligence officer, chief U.N. weapons inspector and the author of numerous books on foreign policy.] There is a curious phenomenon taking place in the American media at the moment: the lionization of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the American military commander in Afghanistan. Although he has taken a few lumps for playing politics with the White House, McChrystal has generally been sold to the American public as a “Zen warrior,” a counterinsurgency gen