TCS Daily January 11, 2006 The controversy over President Bush’s ordering the NSA to monitor phone conversations without a warrant is the latest in a long line of fights over executive authority during wartime. Congress has been increasingly frustrated at being cut out of the decision loop in matters ranging from the conduct of the…
Author: James Joyner
TCS Daily, January 4, 2006 Starting the New Year off much like he ended the old one, Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, the liberal dubbed “the most popular and important force in the blogosphere” by the Weekly Standard, hurls invective at the Bush administration and those who would sacrifice any measure of personal freedom in order to fight terrorists:…
TCS Daily December 21, 2005 Last Friday, the New York Times unleashed a bombshell with a front page story reporting that the Bush administration had repeatedly ordered the National Security Agency to conduct electronic surveillance within the United States without a warrant. Congressmen, including Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, immediately called for hearings. Some, including California Senator Barbara Boxer and Georgia…
Tech Central Station December 9, 2005 One of the lessons of Vietnam taught to American officer cadets is that successful prosecution of a long-term war requires support from the people, the government, and the military. It is considered axiomatic that, if any leg of Clausewitz’ Remarkable Trinity[1] falters, a war effort is doomed. This dictum came…
Tech Central Station December 5, 2005 Some Iraq war critics have lately argued that the American military is not very adept at counterinsurgency. But the reality is a little more complicated than they suggest. Reacting to an article in The New Republic about President Bush’s strategy for defeating insurgents in Iraq by Lawrence Kaplan, The American Propect‘s Matthew Yglesias, observed…
Tech Central Station July 8, 2005 Predictably, George Galloway, the Member of Parliament who was ousted from Britain’s Labour Party for his radical views on the Iraq War, said yesterday’s attacks that killed nearly 40 people and wounded hundreds of others, were the price Britons had to pay for their foreign policy. “No one can condone acts…
Phillip Carter and James Joyner Legal Affairs April 18, 2005 “America has a choice,” write Phillip Carter and Paul Glastris in The Washington Monthly. “It can be the world’s superpower, or it can maintain the current all-volunteer military, but it probably can’t do both.” Their solution is a revival of the draft. Glastris and Carter propose that…
Tech Central Station March 7, 2005 Friday’s shooting incident during which Giuliana Sgrena, a writer for Italy’s communist newspaper Il Manifesto, was wounded and her bodyguard killed by American soldiers has raised serious questions about the way U.S. checkpoints in Iraq are handled. Christian Science Monitor reporter Annia Ciezadlo, in a story published after but written before the incident, describes her own experiences with the checkpoints: It’s…
Tech Central Station March 3, 2005 Phil Carter and Paul Glastris make “The Case for the Draft” in the current Washington Monthly. “America’s all-volunteer military simply cannot deploy and sustain enough troops to succeed in places like Iraq while still deterring threats elsewhere in the world. Simply adding more soldiers to the active duty force, as some in Washington are…
Tech Central Station January 11, 2005 Bradley Graham reports in the Washington Post that Army leaders are pushing to make last year’s increase of 30,000 troops in the active-duty force permanent and to change the law to allow longer and more frequent call-ups of some reservists in order to meet the obligations of the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.…