“You dirty son of a bitch. . . somebody’s got to beat you up and I hereby appoint myself.” Thus Edward Lansdale recalled addressing the CIA station chief in Saigon in the mid-1950s, when Lansdale was a CIA operative under cover of assistant air attaché at the American embassy. Whether or not his…
When Steve Bannon became CEO of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign on August 17, 2016, Trump was far behind Hillary Clinton, according to Bannon. “We were 16 points down,” he said.
When Steve Bannon became CEO of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign on August 17, 2016, Trump was far behind Hillary Clinton, according to Bannon. “We were 16 points down,” he said.
The United States has been at war for nearly a decade and a half, and although American military forces achieved tactical success in Iraq and Afghanistan, they have not been able to convert military victory into political success. This failure to consolidate military gains into stable order has…
The United States has been at war for nearly a decade and a half, and although American military forces achieved tactical success in Iraq and Afghanistan, they have not been able to convert military victory into political success. This failure to consolidate military gains into stable order has…
President Trump has been a strategic success and a tactical failure. That's the genteel way of putting it. The blunt way is that he's pushed ahead relentlessly on big conservative issues. But more than Democrats or the media, he's been his own worst enemy, a tactical bull in a china shop.
President Trump has been a strategic success and a tactical failure. That’s the genteel way of putting it. The blunt way is that he's pushed ahead relentlessly on big conservative issues. But more than Democrats or the media, he's been his own worst enemy, a tactical bull in a china shop.
George Kennan concluded his famous 1947 article, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct," which laid the groundwork for the doctrine of containment at the beginning of the Cold War, with this peroration:
George Kennan concluded his famous 1947 article, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct," which laid the groundwork for the doctrine of containment at the beginning of the Cold War, with this peroration:
Unfortunately, the United States’s strategies against the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) are fundamentally flawed and doomed to fail. A review of the U.S. Joint Doctrine demonstrates that we lack both clear objectives and strategies. This is recipe for failure.
New York City mayor Bill de Blasio said on CBS's Face the Nation that "we have a democracy problem in this country." The liberal mayor blamed Republicans for the problem:
In the middle of March, the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard published a revised version of their 2007 paper, A Cooperative Strategy for the 21st Century. The 2007 edition reflected the strong influence of 9/11, U.S. operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the global campaign against Islamist…
Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the former director under President Obama for the Defense Intel Agency, criticized America's terrorism strategy this morning on Fox:
With the World Series opening tonight in Kansas City, the Giants are no doubt feeling their oats. They’re coming off of a three-homerun performance in their game five win over the St. Louis Cardinals, which landed them their third World Series appearance in five years. However, the Giants should be…
President Obama just announced that he is bringing a counter-terrorism strategy to an insurgency fight. He was at pains to repeat the phrase “counter-terror” four times in a short speech. Noting that ISIL is not a state (partly because the international community thankfully does not recognize it),…
On Wednesday, the eve of the thirteenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, President Obama will speak to the American people about his strategy for dealing with the rise of the Islamic State, the would-be caliphate bestriding Iraq and Syria, the most palpable and present threat to the region…
"Rooting out a cancer like ISIL won’t be easy and it won’t be quick,” President Obama told the American Legion’s annual convention in Charlotte on Tuesday, August 26. He repeated the thought in his pre-Labor Day weekend press conference on August 28. A week before, the day after the murder of James…
Speaking earlier this morning in Estonia, President Obama addressed dealing with ISIS. He talked of making ISIS a "manageable problem" if the "international community" comes together:
Robert Gibbs, the first White House press secretary in the Obama administration, calls President Obama's "we don't have a strategy yet" comment about dealing with ISIS a "wince-able moment."
Josh Earnest appeared on MSNBC's Morning Joe Friday in damage-control mode after President Obama's "we don't have a strategy yet" remark during his press conference on Thursday. Almost immediately after the president made the comment in response to a question by Chuck Todd, Earnest took…
Vice President Joe Biden told a reporter today that the beheading of American journalist James Foley by the ISIS will not alter the approach to the terror group. An "AP reporter asked if Foley's beheading changed the U.S. approach to ISIS," the White House pool report reads. "Biden said no, but it…
In March 1975, with the United States in post-Watergate disarray at home, stunned by repeated diplomatic defeats at the United Nations, and about to suffer the humiliation of seeing an ally at whose side we had fought for many years be overrun by the North Vietnamese Communist Army, Daniel Patrick…
Early Friday morning, September 14, a movie-loving and Romney-supporting friend emailed: “I’m starting to panic. Tell me not to.”
Barack Obama adviser David Plouffe gave a statement to the press to say that his boss would leave the convention with "momentum" but that that the campaign is expecting "the race is going to be about where it was" before the conventions. Plouffe predicts that this "a problem for Mitt Romney."
The Obama campaign ... might eke out a victory, but it is at risk of losing control of the economic narrative. Its best hope is to stop nickel-and-diming Mitt Romney and laundry-listing forgettable initiatives and, instead, give independents reason to think that Obama has a clear, viable plan to…