Roundup: Media's Take

Dr. John Nagl: Let's Win the Wars We're In

[Dr. John Nagl is the President of the Center for a New American Security. He is also a member of the Defense Policy Board, a Visiting Professor in the War Studies Department at Kings College of London, a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and a member of the International Institute of Strategic Studies.] Your mission remains fixed, determined, inviolable. It is to win our wars. -General Douglas MacArthur[1]

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

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

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

Jim Gallen: Echo of 1970? (re: New York Twenty-third Congressional)

[Jim Gallen is an attorney practicing in St. Louis, Missouri. He is also an amateur historian who teaches continuing education classes through St. Louis Community College at Meramec.] The upcoming special election in the New York Twenty-third Congressional brings to mind an earlier three way election in the Empire State. The 2009 special election features Democrat Bill Owens, Republican Dierdre Scozzafava and Conservative Doug Hoffman. Identifying the players in New Yor

Ray McGovern: Kipling Haunts Obama's Afghan War

[Ray McGovern was an Army infantry/intelligence officer and then a CIA analyst for almost thirty years, during which his duties included chairing National Intelligence Estimates. He is cofounder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, and now works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington.] The White Man's Burden, a phrase immortalized by English poet Rudyard Kipling as an excuse for European-American imperiali

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

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

Humberto Fontova: When Fidel Castro Dictated to the Old U.S. Media

[Humberto Fontova is the author of Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him. Visit www.hfontova.com.] We cannot for a second abandon propaganda. Propaganda is vital -- propaganda is the heart of all struggles. (Fidel Castro in a letter to a revolutionary colleague in 1954)A foreign reporter -- preferably American -- was much more valuable to us at that time (1957) than any military victo

Robert Nedelkoff: In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning…

[Robert Nedelkoff, a resident of Silver Spring, MD, received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Louisville and his Juris Doctor degree from Monterey College of Law in 1996. From 1997 until March 2009, he worked on behalf of the Richard Nixon Foundation at the National Archives in College Park, MD. He has published articles in several magazines, including GQ and McSweeney’s.] There has been quite a lot of coverage this week of President Obama’s early-morning journey on Thur

Robert Nedelkoff: He Came, He Saw, He Muddled The Facts

[Robert Nedelkoff, a resident of Silver Spring, MD, received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Louisville and his Juris Doctor degree from Monterey College of Law in 1996. From 1997 until March 2009, he worked on behalf of the Richard Nixon Foundation at the National Archives in College Park, MD. He has published articles in several magazines, including GQ and McSweeney’s.] Rocco Landesman, who was appointed chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts by President Oba

Ronald Brownstein: A Reaganite Or Jacksonian Wave?

[Ronald Brownstein writes a weekly column for National Journal.] Fittingly for a politician who represents Las Vegas, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., this week doubled down on his party's defining political bet. From the White House to Capitol Hill, Democrats are wagering that they can sell Americans on a sweeping and in some ways unprecedented expansion of government's reach to confront both the immediate economic downturn and such long-term challenges as he

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

Ben Piven: Communist North Korea clings to ‘Juche’ ideology

[Ben Piven is a multimedia producer at Worldfocus who went to North Korea in August. He writes about the isolated Communist nation’s Juche state religion.] North Korea is a Cold War relic, but its communist roots alone do not explain the widespread adoption of the ideology knows as Juche — essentially a hybrid of East Asian Confucianism and East European Stalinism. Despite the fact that state literature decrees “man is the master of all things,” Juche (”self-reliance” i

William A. Darity and Darrick Hamilton: Bernanke ignores history of black and white wealth rift

[William A. Darity is the Arts & Sciences Professor of public policy studies and professor of African and African American Studies and economics at Duke University. Darrick Hamilton is an assistant professor of management and urban policy at Milano – The New School, and an affiliated faculty member in the department of economics at The New School for Social Research, and an affiliate scholar at the Center for American Progress.] Last spring when Federal Reserve chair Ben

Ted Sorensen: America's Next Unwinnable War

[Ted Sorensen, former special counsel and adviser to President John F. Kennedy, is the author most recently of Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History.] America’s unwise, unwarranted, and sadly unwinnable war in Afghanistan—hastily initiated and then abandoned for Iraq by President Barack Obama’s ideologically blinded predecessor and dumped into Obama’s lap in the worst possible way—is beginning increasingly to smell like the 1964-68 war in South Vietnam that swallowed up the presi

George H. Wittman: Russia Redux

[George H. Wittman is a member of the Committee on the Present Danger and the founding chairman of the National Institute for Public Policy.] What exactly did Western leaders and pundits think would happen as Russia regained economic stability and again gained leverage in the world of international politics? What did they think would be the outcome of a weakened United States undercut by lack of support by some Western European allies? What they didn't contemplate was

Charles Krauthammer: Obama's Bush Blame Game

[Charles Krauthammer writes about politics and policy for The Washington Post's op-ed page.] Old Soviet joke: Moscow, 1953. Stalin calls in Khrushchev. "Niki, I'm dying. Don't have much to leave you. Just three envelopes. Open them, one at a time, when you get into big trouble." A few years later, first crisis. Khrushchev opens envelope 1: "Blame everything on me. Uncle Joe." A few years later, a really big

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

Robert Parry: Al-Qaeda Outwitted Bush, Neocons

[Parry is an investigative journalist who has worked for the AP and Newsweek. He most recently founded Consortium News, an investigative news e-zine.] As security worsens in Afghanistan and Pakistan, it is clear that al-Qaeda and its Taliban allies outwitted President George W. Bush and his neoconservative advisers by tying down U.S. forces in Iraq for five years while the Islamic militants rebuilt their forces for the war on their “central front.” The growing U.S. casu