Roundup: Media's Take

Fareed Zakaria: The Post-Imperial Presidency

[Fareed Zakaria is editor of Newsweek International.] If you take just one sentence out, Barack Obama's speech on Afghanistan last week was all about focusing and limiting the scope of America's mission in that country. His goal, he said, was "narrowly defined." The objectives he detailed were exclusively military—to deny Al Qaeda a safe haven, reverse the Taliban's momentum, and strengthen the Kabul government's security forces. He said almost nothing about broader goals

Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett: How Obama Wound up with Bush's Iran Policy

[Flynt Leverett directs the New America Foundation's Iran Initiative and teaches international affairs at Pennsylvania State University. Hillary Mann Leverett is the chief executive officer of Stratega, a political risk consultancy.] After months of halfhearted, fruitless attempts at engagement, the United States and its European partners are effectively re-enacting George W. Bush's Iran policy. In 2006, after Iran had ended a nearly two-year voluntary suspension of uranium enrichme

Roy Gutman: U.S.-Afghan history overlooked in Obama address

[Roy Gutman is Foreign Editor for McClatchy. He was diplomatic correspondent for Newsweek and director of American University's Crimes of War Project. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the 1993 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where he provided the first documented reports of concentration camps.] President Obama left a major element out of his West Point address Tuesday as he announced the deployment of 30,0000 troops to Afghanistan: the modern history of America's

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

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

Tim Padgett: After Honduras ... Obama's Latin American Policy Looks Like Bush's

[Tim Padgett writes for TIME magazine.] After months of delay, Arturo Valenzuela was finally confirmed as Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs last month. But for a job with such a long title, he may find it's short on clout these days. Ostensibly, Valenzuela is President Obama's new point man on Latin America; in reality, that job looks to be under the control of Republicans in Congress and conservatives inside Obama's own diplomatic corps. In fact, when it c

Larry Beinhart: Why Should We Get Out of Afghanistan? Because Imperialism Is a Fool's Game

[ Larry Beinhart is the author of "Wag the Dog," "The Librarian," and "Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin." His latest book is Salvation Boulevard. Responses can be sent to beinhart@earthlink.net.] Should we get out of Afghanistan? Yes. Here’s why. Imperialism, in general, is a tough business. Influence, dominate, manipulate, sure. But an occupation

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

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

Frank Gannon: President Obama's Vocal Minority Speech (Echoes of Richard Nixon)

[Frank Gannon won a White House Fellowship and served in the Nixon White House 1971-4. He accompanied RN to San Clemente aboard Air Force One on August 9th and organized the researching and writing of the President’s memoirs, RN.] I’ve looked at a lot of the coverage of the President’s speech at West Point last night, and, so far at least, no one seems to have noticed the precedent and example that is hiding in plain sight: Richard Nixon’s “silent majority” speech of 3 November 1969.

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

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

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

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