My answer: Hell no. The answer I expect historians will give fifty years from now: No. The answer Iraqis are giving now and likely will continue give: Hells No! The answer that the leaders of major US security institutions, from the President on down, have...
Iraq war
Read this fantastic essay over at Best Defense. I meet a lot of veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan through my work, as students, guest speakers, and through the various other.
I have some thoughts on the aftermath of the Wikileaks Iraq release over at World Politics Review: The release reaffirmed much that we already knew, including the high incidence of.
In honor of the trend of "How did I get it wrong" posts, this is a brief examination of how I managed to get it right on Iraq. Revisiting correct decisions can often be just as productive as probing failures. I'm also interested in working...
This is an admirable post by Matt Yglesias. What I especially like is his willingness to conclude that his mistake in judgment on a specific issue was a product not.
Matt Duss shoots, guts, dries, and renders into tasty beef jerky the Chalabi-supporting wing of the neoconservative movement:Even after the invasion, after it became clear that there were no WMD.
Donny Rumsfeld, not quite lying:In his speech at West Point last night, Obama claimed that before he took office, "commanders in Afghanistan repeatedly asked for support to deal with the reemergence of the Taliban, but these reinforcements did not arrive."Rumsfeld is now strongly denying that...
St. Ignatius of Georgetown bestows his benediction on Obama's escalation of the war in Afghanistan, but, being a liberal columnist at the liberal Washington Post, he regrets that the announced.
Tom Ricks:As a British naval historian friend I know once noted, the time when the British government could have helped -- and perhaps stopped the war -- was back in.
I should hope that the absurdity of conservative commentary on Afghanistan is self-evident, but to summarize briefly, the Obama administration is currently under wingnut fire for a) under-resourcing the Afghanistan mission, and b) failing to do exactly what Stanley McChrystal wants (even as it, apparently,...
Some interesting bits in this Telegraph report from last week:Top British commanders angrily described in the documents how they were not even told, let alone consulted, about major changes to.
I endorse most of what Gian Gentile says here about the Vietnam War, especially in the context of this quote from George Herring:…the war could [not] have been ‘won’ in.