Roundup: Media's Take

Harvey Wasserman: Is this Tom Friedman's "Walter Cronkite Moment" on Afghanistan?

[Free Press Senior Editor and "Superpower of Peace" columnist Harvey Wasserman is also senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service. He is author or co-author of a dozen books, including SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, A.D. 2030 and HARVEY WASSERMAN'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.] The Iraq war's chief New York Times cheerleader has reversed field on Afghanistan. Does it mean there will be no escalation? In early 196

Jeff Biggers: Kentucky Straight: Students Call Out Trustees Big Coal Pander in Growing UKY Wildcat Scandal

[Jeff Biggers is the American Book Award-winning author of The United States of Appalachia, and In the Sierra Madre. His next book, Reckoning at Eagle Creek: The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland, is forthcoming in January 2010 (The Nation/Basic Books). His website is: www.jeffbiggers.com] Call it October Madness. Or, Night Comes to the Kentucky Wildcats' Big Dance. In a throwback to 19th century backroom deal making, Univer

Ben Macintyre: Obama must face down the ghost of Vietnam

[Ben Macintyre is Writer at Large for The Times and contributes a regular Friday column.] An unquiet ghost stalks the White House Situation Room as Barack Obama, increasingly Hamlet-like, ponders what to do in Afghanistan: it is the spectre of the Vietnam War, America’s enduring historical hang-up. Comparisons between these two conflicts are easy to make, but hard to avoid: a grinding, unpredictable battle in difficult terrain, a weak and corrupted foreign government ke

Robert Merry: James K. Polk could offer military advice to Obama

[Merry, a former Washington correspondent for The Wall Street Journal and CEO of Congressional Quarterly Inc., is the author of three books, including “A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War, and the Conquest of the American Continent,” which is due from Simon & Schuster on Nov. 3.] Late on the evening of May 14, 1846, President James K. Polk met with his top general, Winfield Scott, to discuss strategy and troop requirements for the looming Mexican War, autho

Adam Holland: Republican Leader Met With Holocaust Museum Shooter

[Mr. Holland runs an investigative blog.] James von Brunn, the neo-Nazi accused of killing security guard Stephen Johns in an attack on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum on June 10, 2009, corresponded with and visited the home of General Albert C. Wedemeyer, a major figure in the U.S. military and in Republican politics during the 1940s, 50s and 60s. Von Brunn's meeting with Wedemeyer took place in the spring of 1981 at Wedemeyer’s home, and their correspondence

Amr Bargisi and Samuel Tadros: Why Are Egypt's 'Liberals' Anti-Semitic?

[Messrs. Bargisi and Tadros are senior partners with the Egyptian Union of Liberal Youth.] Today Egypt will play host to the 56th Congress of Liberal International (LI), which bills itself as the world federation of liberal and progressive democratic parties. Among the nearly 70 parties represented by LI are Britain's Liberal Democrats, Germany's Free Democrats and the Liberal Party of Canada. In the U.S., LI's Web site cites the National Democratic Institute as a cooperating organi

Ed Rollins:Those who quit to protest war

[Ed Rollins, a senior political contributor for CNN, is senior presidential fellow at the Kalikow Center for the Study of the American Presidency at Hofstra University. He was White House political director for President Reagan and chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. ] Matthew Hoh, a young man previously unknown to the general public, has become the first U.S. official known to resign in protest over the Afghan war. He was the senior U.S. civilian adviser in

Thomas L. Friedman: Don't Build Up

It is crunch time on Afghanistan, so here’s my vote: We need to be thinking about how to reduce our footprint and our goals there in a responsible way, not dig in deeper. We simply do not have the Afghan partners, the NATO allies, the domestic support, the financial resources or the national interests to justify an enlarged and prolonged nation-building effort in Afghanistan. I base this conclusion on three principles. First, when I think back on all the moments of progress in that

Ralph Peters: Ignoring the lessons of 3,000 years of fighting insurgencies

[Ralph Peters' latest book is "The War After Armageddon."] Afghanistan isn't com pletely hopeless, just use less. It's a strategic joke with a bloody punch line. Even if everything went perfectly in Afghanistan -- which it won't -- the results would be virtually meaningless: Our mortal enemies (above all, al Qaeda) have dug in elsewhere, from Pakistan to Somalia. Now we are warned that, unless we send another 40,000 US troops to convince Afghans

Paul Fishstein: Afghans Need New Democracy Model

[Paul Fishstein is a research fellow at the Carr and Belfer Centers of the John F Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.] An open can of Heineken in the hand of an Afghan youth pedalling a bicycle seemed an unusual sight for noon in Kabul, so I asked our driver what this was about. He laughed, and said: “Don’t you know? This is democracy.” While democracy is notoriously difficult to define, it is generally considered to be something positive. Until the deba

Josh Gerstein: What if George W. Bush had done that?

[Politico reporter Josh Gerstein is a former national reporter for The New York Sun.] A four-hour stop in New Orleans, on his way to a $3 million fundraiser. Snubbing the Dalai Lama. Signing off on a secret deal with drug makers. Freezing out a TV network. Doing more fundraisers than the last president. More golf, too. President Barack Obama has done all of those things — and more. What’s remarkable is wha

Kristi Keck: Is it morning in America, or has hope given way to malaise?

Nearly a year after the presidential election, the excitement of Barack Obama's campaign has faded into the reality of an Obama White House. As observers try to determine what time it is in American politics, they arrive at opposite conclusions. To some, said Tulane University political scientist Thomas Langston, Obama is like Jimmy Carter, and the nation will soon hammer the nails into the coffin of a dying Democratic coalition just as voters, tired of the Carter "

Joanne Lipman: The Mismeasure of Woman

[Joanne Lipman, a former deputy managing editor at The Wall Street Journal, was the founding editor in chief of Condé Nast Portfolio magazine.] FINALLY! I hear we’re all living in a women’s world now. For the first time, women make up half the work force. The Shriver Report, out just last week, found that mothers are the major breadwinners in 40 percent of families. We have a female speaker of the House and a female secretary of state. Thirty-two women have served as g

Bob Herbert: Changing the World

[Bob Herbert joined The New York Times as an Op-Ed columnist in 1993. His twice a week column comments on politics, urban affairs and social trends.] One of the most cherished items in my possession is a postcard that was sent from Mississippi to the Upper West Side of Manhattan in June 1964. “Dear Mom and Dad,” it says, “I have arrived safely in Meridian, Mississippi. This is a wonderful town and the weather is fine. I wish you were here. The people in this city are wo

NYT Editorial: Trying Karadzic

Radovan Karadzic, accused of ordering some of the worst atrocities in Europe since World War II, is still tormenting his victims. More than 160 Bosnian Muslims traveled to the Hague for the start of the former Bosnian Serb leader’s war crimes trial on Monday only to have him boycott the proceeding. Judges with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yuogoslavia adjourned the session and promised to begin on Tuesday with or without Mr. Karadzic in the dock. The trial must

Leon Wieseltier: Washington Diarist: Common Grounded

[Leon Wieseltier is the literary editor of The New Republic.] The notion of a world society is nothing new to Americans. It dominated the rhetoric of World War II, of the founding of the United Nations, of much of the cold war. It is now a received idea, and its impress may be measured by the success with which advocates have found audiences for issues defined in international terms: the world environmental problem; the world population problem; the world food problem." Those w

Seth Robinson: Why Russia won't cooperate on Iranian sanctions

[Seth Robinson, a former staff member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, is a PhD candidate in International Relations at Georgetown University.] After years of stalemate, negotiations over Iran's controversial nuclear development program seemed to progress last week when an Iranian delegation in Vienna agreed to the export and modification of its low-enriched uranium. The resulting optimism did not last. Officials in Tehran demurred, insisting that they needed more time to

Patrick J. Buchanan: Newt, Sarah and a New GOP

“Sometimes party loyalty asks too much,” said JFK. For Sarah Palin, party loyalty in New York’s 23rd congressional district asks too much. Going rogue, Palin endorsed Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman over Republican Dede Scozzafava. On Oct. 1, Scozzafava was leading. Today, she trails Democrat Bill Owens and is only a few points ahead of Hoffman, as Empire State conservatives defect to vote their principles, not their party. Newt Gingrich stayed on

Jack Shafer: A Real War on the Press ...What FDR could teach Obama about battling Fox News

[Jack Shafer is Slate's editor at large.] How touchy can you get? The White House fires a few pop-guns in the direction of Fox News Channel, and suddenly everybody from Louis Menand in The New Yorker to Michael Scherer in Time to Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post is heralding the Obama administration's declaration of war on Rupert Murdoch's cable station. The direct declaration came not from Barack Obama, but underlings Anita Dunn, who called Fox

Jason Zengerle: The T. E. Lawrence of Afghanistan ... Rory Stewart Takes on McChrystal

[Jason Zengerle is a senior editor of The New Republic.] It's some 400 miles from Harvard Square to Capitol Hill, but when Rory Stewart made the trip last month, he chose an unlikely mode of transport: He took a plane. Stewart is an inveterate, epic walker. He spent part of this past summer strolling the 150 miles from Crieff to Penrith in his native Scotland. More impressively, in 2002, not long after he quit his job with the British Foreign Office, he walked across Afghanistan, a