The National Interest April 24, 2013 In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, several commentators have asked why we label some acts of mass violence “terrorism” while others are considered ordinary crime. Why do we treat those two so very differently, despite the latter being responsible for far more American deaths? The Terror Label […]
The National Interest April 10, 2013 Paul Wolfowitz, a leading cheerleader for and planner of the Iraq War, says “it’s too soon to tell” how it turned out. He observes that, “the Korean armistice was signed sixty years ago, but South Korea struggled for decades after that. Even after thirty years, only an extreme optimist […]
The National Interest April 5, 2013 Chuck Hagel recently delivered his first major public-policy address since becoming secretary of defense. While the bulk of his speech at the National Defense University focused on the need to overhaul our spending priorities radically, a nod to the military officers in the audience caught my attention: As you move onward […]
The Atlantic April 4, 2013 In his first major policy address as Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel called for a radical overhaul of our armed forces — “not just tweaking or chipping away at existing structures and practices.” While the goal is bold and laudable, history tells us that achieving it is unlikely. Hagel cited Dwight Eisenhower’s […]
The National Interest March 19, 2013 As we approach the tenth anniversary of the American invasion of Iraq on March 20, it’s worth reflecting on the fact that it has been nearly seventy years since America’s last successful major war. On August 15, 1945, known as Victory Over Japan Day or V-J Day, the Japanese […]
The National Interest February 6, 2013 A secret Justice Department memo detailing in great length when the president has the authority to unilaterally order American citizens murdered without so much as a criminal charge has been released. The 16-page white paper titled “Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a U.S. Citizen Who is a Senior Operational […]
The National Interest February 1, 2013 The Senate confirmation hearings over Chuck Hagel’s nomination to be the next secretary of defense were a classic case of garbage in, garbage out. Sadly, they were par for the course in the American national-security debate. The hearings literally broke Twitter in the early going, and the tweets with […]
New York Daily News December 6, 2012 As a theoretical matter, remotely piloted vehicles are simply a tool of warfare, morally indistinguishable from manned aircraft. The more efficiently the U.S. can target and kill its enemies, the better. And drones are cheaper to operate, carry far less risk for American military personnel and make it […]
The New Republic, September 26, 2012 *Republished by The Australian as “Drones Backfire as Civilian Toll Mounts,” October 3, 2012) A new study released this week by researchers at Stanford and NYU has found that American drone strikes in Pakistan are killing far more civilians than advertised, taking out few high value targets, and have become the […]
The National Interest September 19, 2012 Afghanistan has been unwinnable has been obvious to most outside analysts since well before the so-called surge of 2009. Now, the United States government has finally admitted the obvious in deeds if not words. Following the murder of six NATO troops in yet another “green on blue” attack in which Afghan […]